Pinjar

The Skeleton and other stories

Amrita Pritam

Translated and Adapted by

KHUSHWANT SINGH

Tara press

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Pinjar
The Skeleton and other stories
Amrita Pritam

Tara press
Flat 6, Khan Market, New delhi 110003
contact@indiaresearchpress.com ; bahrisons@vsnl.com

Copyright © 1987-2009 Amrita Pritam

English Translation and adaptation by Khushwant Singh
Publication rights 2009 Tara Press, New Delhi

Translated and adapted from the Punjabi by Khushwant Singh

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise
without prior written permission of the Publishers.

Printed for Tara Press at Focus Impressions, New Delhi.

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Amrita Pritam August 31, 1919 – October 31, 2005
A TRIBUTE
In her writing career spanning over six decades, Amrita wrote with
words dipped in blood. Her’s is a story unforgettable. She wrote from the
heart.
Some of her works brought her fame for which she was honoured with
the Sahitya Akadami award and the Bharatiya Jnanpith award (the highest
Indian honour for Literature). But it was the simplicity of her style and the
purity of her thoughts that she stayed a writer for the common person on the
streets.
Brought together in this volume are two of the most moving novels by
one of India’s greatest women writers. The Skeleton, set against the
background of religious and clan feuds on the eve of Partition.
The Skeleton, translated from Punjabi into English by Khushwant Singh,
is memorable for its lyrical style and the depth in her writing. Amrita Pritam
portrays the inmost being of the novel’s complex characters.
That Man is a compelling account of a young man born under strange
circumstances and abandoned at the altar of God.
Amrita Pritam, recipient of the Jnanpith Award - India’s most prestigious
literary prize, for her Kagaz Te Canvas (Punjabi), Sahitya Akademi Award,
Padma Shri and many other such honours, wrote for the common people in
Punjabi and was known for her simplicity and purity of thought. Where she
wrote the acclaimed and laurels winning Pinjar or the Raseedi Tikat, she also
wrote the thrilling Doctor Dev, Kore Kaagaz (blank pages) and Unchaas Din
(49 days).
Essentially a poet, she has several novels and collections of short stories
to her credit and in total penned 28 novels, 18 anthologies of prose, five short
stories and 16 miscellaneous prose volumes. Much of her writing has been
translated into English, Hindi and some European languages.
Soon, you will see most of her works in this imprint (Tara Press) within
the next two-three years and we hope you will enjoy her writings as much as
we have enjoyed collecting them for you.

Anuj Bahri (Publisher)

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 In this Collection
Pinjar (the Skeleton)
That Man

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 Aj aakhan Waris Shah nun,
kiton kabraan vichchon bol,
Te aj kitab-e-ishq daa koi agla varka phol

Ik roi si dhi Punjab di,

tun likh likh maare vaen,
Aj lakhaan dhian rondian, tainun Waris Shah nun kaehn

Uth dardmandaan dia dardia,

uth takk apna Punjab
Aj bele lashaan bichhiaan
te lahu di bhari Chenab

Today, I call Waris Shah,

“Speak from your grave”
And turn today,
the book of love’s next affectionate page

once, a daughter of Punjab cried

and you wrote a wailing saga
Today, a million daughters, cry to you,
Waris Shah Rise!

O’ narrator of the grieving; rise! look

at your Punjab Today,
fields are lined with corpses,
and blood fills the Chenab.

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 Pinjar (The Skeleton)

THE SKY WAS colourless grey. Pooro sat on her haunches with a sack
spread beneath her feet. She was shelling peas. She pressed open a pod and
pushed out the row of peas with her finger. A slimy, little slug stuck to her
thumb. She felt as if she had stepped into a cesspool; she clenched her teeth,
flicked off the slug and rubbed her hands between her knees.
Pooro stared at the three heaps in front of her; the empty husks, thepods, and
the peas she had shelled. She put her hand on her heart and continued to look
vacantly into space. She felt as if her body was a peapod inside which she
carried a slimy, white caterpillar. Her body was unclean. If only she could
take the worm out of her womb and fling it away! Pick it out with her nails as
if it were a thorn! Pluck it off as if it were a maggot or a leech …!
Pooro stared at the blank wall facing her. Memories of the days past came
crowding into her mind.
Pooro belonged to a family of money-lenders of Chatto village. Although
they had given up money-lending for some generations, they continued to be
described as sahukars. They had seen bad days and at one time been
compelled to sell their kitchen utensils on which the names of their
forefathers were engraved. Pooro’s father and uncle could not bear any more
disgrace. They left the village and went to Thailand. There the wheel of
fortune turned in their favour. At that time Pooro was a little girl of nine.
Besides her, there was a baby boy still in his mother’s arms. Then her father
came back, cleared the mortgage on the house (the capital and compound
interest were more than the price of a new house), saved his ancestral home
from attachment by creditors and so wiped off the disgrace. He sold whatever
grain and fodder he had raised on his land and returned to Thailand. But this
time he left behind a home the family could call its own and a name it could
be proud of. When he returned to the village the next time, Pooro was
fourteen years old. There was also her younger brother and succeeding him,
three younger sisters. Her mother was expected her sixth child.
The first thing Pooro’s parents did on their return to Chitto was to find a
young man – the son of a well-to-do family in the neighbouring village,
Rattoval – for the hand of their daughter. Pooro’s mother only awaited the
birth of her own new baby. As soon as she had had her ritual bath, she
planned to arrange her daughter’s wedding. Pooro’s parents were resolved to
lighten themselves of the burden of a daughter.
Pooro’s fiancé was both handsome and intelligent. His parents owned the only
house in the village which had a penthouse of solid bricks; it had the word
Om inscribed on the balcony. They also owned three buffaloes. Pooro’s father
presented the boy’s parents with five silver rupees and a piece of sugar candy
and so “booked” him for his daughter. In those days it was customary
amongst the Hindus of the region to make matrimonial exchanges, so despite
the fact that Pooro’s brother was barely twelve, he was engaged to her
fiance’s sister, who was a small child.
Pooro’s mother had had three daughters in succession with only two years
betseen them. She had had enough daughters, and now that fortune was
smiling on them once again and they had plenty to eat and sufficient to wear,
she wished that her next child should be another son. She had offered prayers
to the Holy Mother. The women of the village brought cowdung and made an
idol in her courtyard. They covered the head of the idol with a bright, red veil
bordered with gold, and pinned a tiny gold nose-stud in its nostril. All of them
changed in chorus.

Holy Mother, be cross when you come!

Holy Mother, be happy when you go!
The village folk believed that it was the Holy Mother who determined the sex
of a new-born child. If she was gay and full of laughter, it implied that she
was on good terms with her husband. In that case she would quickly make a
girl-child and rush back to her spouse. On the other hand, if she were in a
sullen mood, it implied that she had quarreled with her husband and would be
in no hurry to get back to him. Shewould then stay a long time and patiently
make the child into a boy. The women repeated their chant:

Holy Mother, be cross when you come!

Holy Mother, be happy when you go!
The Holy Mother was apparently close by and heard the chanting of the
women. A fortnight later Pooro’s mother gave birth to a baby boy. There was
much rejoicing. Even distant relatives of the family received felicitations from
their friends and neighbours. All that worried Pooro’s mother now was that
the boy was a trikhal, because he had come after three girls, and so might be
ill-starred; they either died young or shortened the lives of their brothers or
parents. So the women had to get together again to appease the Holy Mother.
They made a hole in a large metal plate, passed the baby through it twice and
chanted:
There comes a legion of trikhals –
A legion of trikhals!
After these rituals, the mother felt assured that her son, though a trikhal,
would live.
Pooro was now fifteen. She felt a strange upsurge of blood in her limbs. Her
breasts burgeoned, her kameez became too tight for her. She bought calico
prints from a neighbouring market and had new ones made. She also got a
new set of dupattas to match. She had them thickly sprinkled with silvery
mica.
Pooro’s girl friends had pointed out her fiancé, Ram Chand to her; the lad’s
featuresbecame imprinted on Poroo’s mind. Whenever she recalledhis face, a
deep blush came to her cheeks.
Pooro wasnot allowed to go out of her home by herself. There was a lot of
coming and going between the two neighbouring villages and her mother
featured that people from Ram Chand’s village might see her daughter. There
was another reason to be cautious – the Muslims had become very aggressive.
Hindu girls never ventured out except in the broad daylight of the afternoon.
Pooro often went across her father’s fields and strayed on to the footpath
connecting the two villages. She loitered in the neighbouring lots, on the
pretext of picking spinach. Sometimes she would go to the jamun tree, shake
its branches and spend a long time gathering the fruit. She would keep her
friends engaged in gossip while her eyes watched the footpath which led to
Ram Chand’s village. She prayed that Ram Chand might come that way, so
that she could have a good look at him. The very thought would set her hart
beating faster. And then her night would be spent in dreaming of the you who
was soon to become her husband

One day when Pooro went out with her friends, she wore her new pair of
slippers which cut into her heels.her feet hurt, she began to lag behind. Her
friends turned back to the village. The twilight began to deepen across the sky
like a mass of molten lead. The footpath ran in a zig-zag path through fallow
land, passed under groves of peepul trees and then skirted clusters of bushes.
Pooro saw her friends a long way ahead of her. A large blister had come up on
her right heel. she took off her slippers and hurried barefoot.
The girls had teased Pooro that her right foot hurt because her right side was
heavier than her left. They had said that right hand was also bigger than the
left. “You will see when the wedding bangles are slipped on your arms,” said
they mischievously. She saw it all taking place before her eyes; the girls
forcing red ivory bangles on to her arms; the bigger sliding on easily; the
smaller slipping on the left arm but unable to go over the right hand. The
barber, whose job it was, would grease her wrist with oil and try to force her
hand through the ivory bangle. Would it stand the strain? The bangle was the
symbol of marital bliss. If one broke, it was a sure sign of disaster to come –
perhaps of an early widowhood. Pooro looked angrily at her right hand. She
prayed that Ram Chand would live to a great age – to a hundred thousand
years or more.
Pooro was lost in her thoughts. A man suddenly emerged from behind a
peepul tree and stood in the middle of the path, barring her way. It was the
Muslim lad, Rashida. He was a powerfully built youth in his early twenties.
His lips were curled in a mischievous smile. His eyes were glued on Pooro’s
still unformed breasts.
Pooro screamed and ran past Rashida. When she caught up with her friends
on the outskirts of the village she was out of breath and terrified.
“Was it a boy or a tiger?” the girls teased her. Pooro was too distracted to
reply. “You are a little ninny!” said one of them. “You are lucky it wasn’t a
bear! A tiger devours its victims. A bear is said to take a woman to his cave
and behave towards her as if she were its wife.”
The girls burst out laughing.
Pooro shuddered at the prospect. The unfortunate wretch who had to lie with
a bear! The more she thought of it, the paler she became. She saw Rashida’s
hairy, powerful form and glowing eyes. She heard the laughter of her friends
disappear down the village lane.
Two days later Pooro went out to the fields to pick radish beans. She plucked
a handful and went to a neighbouring well. She washed the beans and put a
tender one in her mouth. She heard a sound and looked up. Rashida was
standing by the trunk of a tree staring at her. Pooro felt the blood drain from
her legs.
“Why the fear, beautiful? I am your slave.” Rashida had the same
mischievous smile as before on his face.
Rashida looked like an enormous grizzly bear. Would he stretch out his arms
and with his big claws draw her into an embrace? Would he caress her neck
with his sharp nails? Would he drag her to his cave and…?
Two peasants came along the path. Even that did not put Rashida off. He
stayed where he was, with a lecherous grin on his face. Pooro fled to her
home.
Pooro said nothing about these encounters to her parents. Her friends advised
her that it was not the sort of thing one told one’s father or mother. They told
her that all men stared at young women and described themselves as their
servants or slaves; one should not take that sort of nonsense too seriously. Let
the men talk! Did people stop walking on the roads for fear of the dogs’
barking at them?
Pooro’s wedding day was drawing near. Her father had hoarded tins of ghee
and sacks of flour to feed his guest. Her mother had filled a wooden chest
with embroidered dupattas and dresses of pure silk she had brought from
Thailand. Her finger-tips had become sore crinkling the dupattas. The out-
house was all a glitter with brass utensils to be given away in the dowry.
Pooro had herself got together small pieces of embroidery to make her
bedspread. She made wickerwork baskets and moorhas with her own hands.

One evening while her mother was giving her breast to her baby son, Pooro
decided to cook spinach. She picked tender leaves of sarson, sliced them into
tiny bits and washed them twice. She scrubbed the saucepan with a bundle of
coarse string and put the spinach into it. She added chick-peas till the
saucepan was full up to the brim and put it on a gentle fire to simmer. She
pushed more faggots under the saucepan.
Pooro was like her mother’s right hand; she could cook and look after the
home without much effort. Pooro’s mother saw her daughter busy with the
cooking. A deep sigh escaped the mother’s lips. She would soon be losing
her; then her home would look utterly empty. Her eyes filled with tears. She
began to sing a daughter’s lament:
O Mother of mine, clasp me to your bosom
And answer just one question
Tell me not a long tale.
Tell me why you bore me If tonight we have to part?
The mother’s voice choked with emotion and she began to sob. She controlled
her sobs and started again in a faltering voice:
I have got out my spinning-wheel,
I have my wads of cotton,
I’ll spin sheets with square patterns
To sons are given homes and palaces;
Daughters are exiled to foreign lands.
Pooro ran up to her mother and clasped her by the knees. Mother and
daughter burst into tears.
The afternoon shadows had begun to lengthen across the courtyard. It
occurred to Pooro’s mother that they had only cooked one vegetable and it
would be embarrassing if someone were to turn up unexpectedly from her
daughter’s fiancés family. She asked Pooro to get a handful of okra beans
from the fields.
Pooro had an uneasy feeling. She took one of her little sisters with her. She
plucked okra and radish beans and the two turned back homeward. From
behind her came the sound of horse-hoofs in full gallop. Before she could get
off the footpath she felt something hit her violently on her right shoulder. She
reeled under the blow; she felt a human arm entwine about her waist and lift
her into the air. She found herself lying across the horse’s saddle.
Pooro’s shrieks faded into the distance as the horse and rider flew across the
fields of Chatto village.
Pooro did not know from where the horse had come, nor who was the man
riding it; she did not know how far she had been carried. She had lost
consciousness, and when she came to her senses she found herself on a
charpoy in a room with the door shut. She banged her forehead against the
walls and hammered the door with her bare hands till she fell exhausted. She
felt someone rub hot ghee on her scalp. For moment she believed it was her
mother beside her pillow. An agonized cry escaped her lips : “Amma!”
“My sins be forgiven me! Speak to me just once!” said a voice beside her.
Pooro raised her fevered head. It was Rashida. She shrieked and fell back
unconscious on her charpoy. She dreamed she was in a cave. A black bear
was combing her hair with its claws. She shrank in size, while the bear grew
bigger and bigger. The bear took her in its shaggy embrace…
Pooro opened her eyes and stared vacantly at the ceiling. Someone was
rubbing the soles of her feet. He gently pressed her shoulders and with his
hands poured water between her lips. He put a teaspoonful of hot ghee mixed
with gur into her mouth. She took a sip and spat out the rest.
She sat up on the charpoy. “Where am I?” “You are with me,” was his simple
reply. He sat on a wooden stool in front of her. He had lowered his eyes; he
did not have the courage to look Pooro in the face.
“Why have you brought me here?” asked Pooro boldly. “I will tell you
another time,” he replied and went out of the room leaving the door ajar.
Pooro saw a small courtyard leading to another room and with an entrance on
to the street. She got up from the charpoy. Her legs shook beneath her. She
walked round the room, examining the walls. After a while she ventured out
into the courtyard. In one corner there was a heap of ashes. Beside the heap
were a baking plate, a brass pot and a saucepan. In a niche in the wall was a
pitcher of water. She could not see any sign of life.
With faltering steps she went towards the entrance. The door was shut as
firmly as her own fate. Pooro put her head against the door, but it refused to e
moved by her sorrowing face or by her tears. She screwed up all her courage
and beat upon the door with her hands. It did not give in, nor did her
hammering attract anyone’s attention. She peered through the crevices.
Outside was a vast stretch of open ground. She could see no houses, huts or
hovels or any sign of life. She wiped her face with the hem of her shirt and
turned back. She poured out the water from the pitcher into her pal and
splashed it in her eyes.
The door opened. Rashida entered and bolted it from inside. He put a double
padlock on the door.
“Pooro, why waste so much time and energy? Come inside and have
something to eat. You have had nothing for two days,” said Rashida. He did
not try to take her by the hand. He did not even look lecherously at her.
“Rashida, have pity on me! Take me back to my people!”
Pooro clasped his feet.
Rashida picked her up and took her in his powerful arms. “Who will quench
the fire in my heart?” he asked. Pooro tried to free herself, but could not get
out of his embrace.
The day passed – and the night. The door remained closed, with Rashida
guarding it like a sentinel. After some days he bean to take her out for a few
minutes before dawn and after twilight. Pooro saw that their hut was in the
middle of a large orchard. It was probably meant for the gardener, but she did
not see or hear anyone tending the fruit. The days were long – the nights
endless. She was, however, grateful that Rashida had not said a harsh word to
her and her honour was unsullied. He took as little notice of her entreaties as
he did of her curses.
By her own reckoning she had spent a full fortnight in the prison.
One day Rashida brought a silk dress of bright red and placed it in front of
Pooro. He told her bluntly, “Tomorrow you have to wear this; a Maulvi will
be coming to perform our nikah. Be ready in time.” He continued in his
matter-of-fact tone, “Woman, that which has not happened yet must now
come to pass.” Pooro again fell at Rashida’s feet and pleaded with him. He
remained unmoved. “Pooro, your entreaties will not make the slightest
difference. Do not make me feel as if I had committed a murder, I swear by
Allah, I cannot bear to see you crying all the time.
“Tell me, in the name of your Allah, why did you do this to me?” she asked.
“Maybe we were man and wife in a previous life,” he replied naively. “But
why do you bother your head with such things? What was to happen has
happened. I promise that no harm will come to you for the rest of your life.”
He continued, after a pause, “Did you know that our families, the Shaikhs and
the Sahukars have been at loggerheads for many generations? Your
grandfather had advanced us Rs.500 on compoundinterest and taken our
house as mortgage. We could not redeem the mortgage. He attacked our house
and had the entire Shaikh family ejected. We were rendered homeless.
That was not all. His agents used foul language towards our womenfolk, and
your uncle kept my father’s sister in his house for three nights – with the
knowledge of your grandfather! The Shaikhs were then like a bundle of
sugarcane from which all the juice had been squeezed out. They wept bitter
tears of blood and bided their time. My grandfather made my uncles swear
that they would avenge these insults. When we heard of the plans of your
wedding, there was talk of settling of old scores. They picked on me; they
made me take an oath on the Koran that I would abduct the Sahukar’s
daughter before she was wed.”
Pooro heard the story of her fate with resignation. Rashida continued: “Allah
is my witness that on the very first day I cast my eyes on you, I fell in love
with you. It was my love and the prodding of the Shaikh clan that made me do
this. But I cannot bear to see you so sad.”
“If my uncle abducted your aunt, what fault was that of mine? You have
reduced me to a homeless vagand.” Pooro held her head between her hands,
her face was wet with tears.
“That is exactly what I told my uncles, but they taunted me.” “And at their
instigation you took my life!” cried Pooro.
“Pooro, I will put the world at your feet,” said Rashida in a voice full of
emotion. “I will love you as long as
I love. I will not behave the way your uncle behaved towards my aunt.”
“Rashida, let me see my mother once.”
“Good woman, you have no place in that family any more! If they let youi n
even once, not one of their Hindu friends or relatives will take a drop of water
in their house. And you have been with me for fifteen days.”
“I have only eaten your food and drunk your water, I…” Pooro could not put
the rest into words.
“Who will believe it? I will first marry you and only then…” Rashida looked
up nervously at the girl.
Pooro thought of what her wedding was to be like. She would have bathed in
oil and massaged with a stick of turmeric; her arms would have been loaded
with red ivory bangles, and tasseled strings of cowrie-shells would have been
tied to her wrists. She would have worn a dress of pure silk; she would have
ridden to Ram Chand’s home in a palanquin; she would have been the world’s
most beautiful bride…and then…
“My parents must have had a terrible time,” she said at last.
“I suppose they cried and beat their breasts in the same way as my
grandfather and my uncles must have done when my aunt was taken,” replied
Rashida without much pity in his voice; then he added with a cynical smile:
“The police have been searching for you but have reported that they could not
find any clue. How could they? They have taken exactly Rs.500 from us. We
have the upper hand now; most of the villagers are Muslims; no Hindu dare
raise his eyes before us. They are lucky their lives and property are safe. They
know that if they want to keep their heads on their shoulders, they had better
stay quiet.” There was bitterness in Rashida’s voice. Perhaps the old fire of
revenge was not extinct.
Hate welled up in Pooro’s heart as she heard Rashida’s words. He had robbed
her of her birthright; he had robbed her of her future. Her parents had
probably given her up for lost and left the village.
“Have my parents left for Thailand?” she asked quietly.
“Not yet.”
“How far are we from my village?” she asked.
“Not very far. But don’t even dream of going to Chatto. When things settle
down, I will take you there myself. Perhaps after six months or so.”

That morning Pooro planned her escape. To avoid suspicion, she ate all the
sweet rice and curry Rashida brought for her. At night she stole the key of the
door from beneath his pillow. Later, when he was fast asleep, she quietly
unlocked the door and stepped out of her prison.
The pitch black of the night terrified her; she almost turned back. She was not
sure if she would be able to find her way to Chatto. She might fall into the
hands of some rustic worse than Rashida! Then the faces of her mother,
brothers and sisters appeared before her eyes. She took the path she believed
led to her home. The dim light of the coming dawn made the landscape
somewhat clearer. She found herself on the right path and saw the outlines of
her village.
Now the die was cast. She used all her strength and began to run. She came to
the village and reached the lane that led to her home. The sky had not turned
grey when she found herself before her father’s threshold.
Pooro rattled the chain. The door opened from the other side and she fell on
the courtyard. She had used up all her strength; as soon as she reached the
winning-post she had collapsed. She lay on the mud floor moaning like a
wounded animal. She found her parents standing above her with oil lamps in
their hands; she saw tears streaming from her mother’s eyes. She felt her
mother take her in her arms and clasp her to her bosom, as a cry of anguish
broke from her heart.
“The neighbours will hear. There will be a crowd,” warned her father. Pooro’s
mother stuffed her mouth with the hem of her shirt.
“Daughter, this fate was ordained for you, we are helpless.” Pooro heard her
father’s voice. She clung to her mother. “The Shaikhs will descend on us and
destroy everything we have.” “Take me to Thailand with you!” cried Pooro.
“Who will marry you now? You have lost your religion and your birthright. If
we dare to help you, we will be wiped out without a trace of blood left behind
to tell of our fate.”
“Then destroy me with your own hands.”
“Daughter, it would have been better if you had died at birth! If the Shaikhs
find you here they will kill your father and your brothers. They will kill all of
us,” said the mother, hardening her heart.
Pooro remembered Rashida’s words: “You have no place in that home now.”
But what about her fiancé, Ram Chand? What was the difference between
being engaged and being married? Why had he not bothered to come to her
help? There was one hope for her: escape in death.
Pooro got up and went out of the door. Neither her mother nor her father tried
to stop her. When she had come this way earlier, she had believed she was
returning to life; she had wanted to live again, to be with her mother and
father. She had come full of hope. Now she had no hope, nor any fear. What
more could anyone take from her than life? The thought dried up all her tears.
Rashida came running breathlessly towards her. Pooro stopped in her
footsteps. Even death had slammed the door in her face. Rashida grabbed her
by the arm. She followed him without a word.
The third day the Maulvi came with another two or three men. They
performed Pooro’s marriage ceremony with Rashida. A few days later
Rashida told her that her parents had left for Thailand.
Rashida’s parents were dead. He had no sisters; only brothers and uncles. He
decided to leave his village for aother, called Sakkar, a few miles away, where
a distant cousin, Rahima, had some land. He could exchange some of his land
with Rahima’s and make his home there. He told Pooro of his plans. There
was no reaction from her – after her parents had turned her away from their
door, leaving the ancestral village did not seem so momentous. All said and
done, what difference did it make? All villages were alike.
Rashida packed is odds and ends in a few steel trunks and set out for Sakkar.
Pooro followed him as the blind follows a guide. They found a small house
some distance from Raima’s. The first relations of Rashida’s that Pooro met
were the women of Rahima’s household. They did not pester her with many
questions; they only wanted to find out if she needed anything for her new
home and whether they could be of any help. Nevertheless, Pooro felt like a
stray calf in a strange herd of cows.
There were more changes in store for her. Till then Rashida had called her by
her proper Hindu name. one day he brought a stranger with him and asked his
wife to stretch out her arm. The man tattooed on it the new name she had been
given when she was married to Rashida. From that day “Hamida” was not
only inscribed on her skinin dark green letters but everyone began to call her
by that name.
In her dreams, when she met her old friends and played in her parents’ home,
everyone still called her Pooro. At other times she was Hamida. It was a
double life: Hamida by day, Pooro by night. In reality, she was neither one nor
the other, she was just a skeleton, without a shape or a name.
Six months later a tiny life began to stir inside her frame.

The sky was a colourless grey. Hamida sat on her haunches with a piece of
sacking between her feet and her eyes fixed on space.
Rashida came from the front door into the courtyard. The sound of his
footsteps did not reach her ears, nor the sightof his form register on her eyes.
She was like a statue. Rashida sat down beside her, put his arm round her
shoulders and began tenderly, “Woman of God…”
Hamida did not move away. After a long time she said, “I feel something
stabbing inside me.”
“You never go out, nor meet anyone.” Rashida remarked after a while. “Being
alone all the time is bound to depress you.”
“Where can I go to? Whom am I related except to you?” she replied with
great bitterness.
Rashida did not say anything for some time. He lit the fire in the hearth and
put the quails he had brought with him into the pot. He again put his arm
round his wife’s shoulders as the two watched the birds cooking.
“You are the mistress of this home. In a few days more another being will be
playing about in your courtyard. Even if you don’t care for me, you should try
to be cheerful for the sake of the child. What wrong has the innocent little one
done to you?”
Hamida thought of the slimy slug in the pea-pod. It was nauseating.
“Would you like some peas to go with the quails?” asked Rashida, seeing
them heaped in front of Hamida.
“They are over-ripe; the season for peas is over. It will soon be Baisakh.” She
could not bear the thought of eating peas that day.
“Tomorrow is the first of Baisakh,” said Rashida casually. “There will be a
big festival.”
Baisakh ! The word struck like a gong in Hamida’s ears. It continued the
strike – Baisakh! She quickly got up and busied herself kneading flour to bake
chaptis.
“It would be nice to have sweet vermicelli after the quails,” said Rashida.
Hamida went in, got vermicelli and a lump of gur.
She recalled once telling her mother when she was rolling vermicelli.
“Mother, I would much prefer it out of a machine.” And her mother had
retorted brusquely: “Fie girl, only the Muslims eat machine-made vermicelli!”
The memory brought tears to Hamida’s eyes. Then she began to laugh.
Rashida looked up, surprised. “What makes you laugh?” She told him and
started to laugh again. Rashida’s smile changed to a shy snigger.
Next morning Pooro was awakened by the sound of drums. She went up on to
the roof and saw peasants gathering in the fields – tall, powerfully-built
rustics with new lungis round their waists, carrying polished bamboo staves
which glistened in the sun. it was animated crowd, with groups moving
restlessly from one end of the gathering to the other. There were some people
on horseback, with their wives perched behind them and a child or two in
front. Others were on foot leading their children by the hand, with their
women trailing after them. There were young bucks strutting about with their
broad chests puffed out like pouter-pigeons. There was much yelling and
shouting; then bursts of song. In one corner they had dug over the earth and
men were wrestling there. Even from that distance Hamida caught the smell
of sweet, succulent jalebis and hot pakoras being fried in oil. She could see
mounds of sweet meats spread out in broad iron trays. Then the thought
pierced through her heart like a steel shaft: her mother had borne a son after
three daughters and this was his first Baisakh! She must have given her baby
brother his first sip of water – touched his lips with a rose-petal dipped in the
river. Their kinsmen must have come over to offer their good wishes …
perhaps at that time her mother’s thoughts would have strayed to her first-
born, Pooro!
Hamida had no tears left in her eyes. She simply held her head between her
hands and remained where she was for a long time.
A party of young lads with flowers entwined round their ears came along the
street below; they laughed with gay abandon. One of the boys raised his voice
and sang:
Beside the well sat a maiden fair,
Brushing her teeth as bright as pearls.
Fear not, maiden. He that loves you
Shall come and take you away.
He shall come and steal you away.
He shall come without your bidding.
He shall make you his own one day.
Why had Ram Chand not come for her? Did he not love her? It was Rashida
who had come without her bidding; it was Rashida who had stolen her away
and made her his wife. But did he love her?
The peasants danced the Bhangra as they went along. They yelled and leapt in
the air. Then one of them sang a few couplets on his own:
When your nose-ring gleamedin the sun
The ploughmen left their ploughing.
Your wet lungi sticks to your bottom
Maiden fair, turn not your back to us.
Why were all the songs sung in praise of pretty girls? Why did someone not
compose songs of lament for girls in her predicament? Why not hymns for
those whom God has discarded?
A party of girls came down the lane. They were young, but there was the
impatience of youthful womanhood in their movements. They passed by the
Bhangra dancers. The boys stole sidelong glances at the girls; they giggled
like the girls, then made bawdy jokes and roared with laughter. What if the
boys were suddenly to pick up the girls and carry them away on their horses?
What if all the girls were abducted…? Thus passed the festival of the first of
Baisakh.

It was mid-summer. The earth burned like an oven full of dry faggots. Hamida
was restless; she stood up, sat down, lay flat on her back. But nothing calmed
her, not even the bowls of water that she gulped down repeatedly. The women
advised her to wash her hair and take a bath, because there was no knowing
when the child might come. Then she would not be able to leave her bed for
several days.
With each bout of pain Hamida got paler, till her face was an white as cotton.
To Rashida she looked exactly as she had when he had grabbed her and
thrown her across his saddle – as white as punice-stone. That day her cries
had come out of the anguish of her soul; today they rose out of the anguish of
the flesh.
Rashida sent for Rahima’s mother. By the time she arrived, Hamida’s pains
were following each other in quick succession. Rahima’s mother sent for the
midwife. The midwife came, spread an old mat on the ground and laid
Hamida on it. After the soft bed, the hard floor hurt Hamida and she began to
whimper.
Rashida stood guard on the threshold. He could hear Hamida’s long, stifled
moans through the closed door. He wished he could take some if not all of the
pain from his wife’s body into his. But there she was – all alone in her
suffering.
The midwife fanned Hamida’s face. Rahima’s mother poured water into her
mouth with a teaspoon. Rashida heard Hamida shriek thrice; then the crying
of a newborn babe fell on his ears. He breathed a protracted sigh of relief; at
long last the agony was over. He wanted to go inside to massage his wife’s
limbs and give her comfort. He wanted to make up to her. So far, he had
brought her nothing but tears. But the midwife and Rahima’s mother were still
busy inside.
The minutes slowly ticked by and there was not a sound from within.
Rashida’s heart sank. Was Hamida dead?
One full hour later, the midwife came out and said, “Congratulations, son.
You have been blessed with a son.”
“And how is she?” the question escaped Rashida’s lips. “She is all right,”
replied the midwife with a reassuring smile. “That is how the family tree
bears fruit. Sons do not drop down through the ceilings, do they?” She exuded
the sense of assurance which had helped hundreds of women to bear their
travail.
When Rashida went in, Hamida was lying in bed with her eyes closed. Beside
her, wrapped in white cloth, sucking his thumb, was their son. Rashida was
overcome with emotion. He had won over the Hindu girl. The gamble had
paid off. Pooro was no longer the girl he had abducted and made his mistress
– not a woman he had brought in as a housekeeper. She was Hamida, the
mother of his son.
Rashida took a silver rupee and a lump of gur and waved them over his son’s
head. Hamida opened her eyes. They seemed to say, “What more do you want
of me? Have given you my person and I have given you a son. I have nothing
more to give.” Then she closed her eyes.
The women poured hot gur mixed with almonds between Hamida’s lips. This
revived her and she opened her eyes again. She felt her son’s soft face
nuzzling into her bare arm. A cold, clammy feeling ran through her body – as
if a slimy slug was clambering over her. She clenched her teeth; she wanted to
shake the slug off her arm, flick it away from her side, draw it out as one
draws out a thorn by taking its head between one’s nails, pluck it out of her
flesh like a tick or a leech and cast it away……

Four days after Hamida had been delivered of her son, her breasts filled with
milk. On the fifth day, the midwife (who had been feeding the babe with
drops of milk squeezed from wads of cotton wool) put the boy to his mother’s
breast. A strange, strong emotion welled up in Hamida’s bosom. She wanted
to put the child against her cheek and cry to her heart’s content. The boy was
a toy made of her own blood, a statue cared out of her own flesh. In all the
teeming world, this boy was all that really belonged to her. She did not care if
she never again saw the faces of her mother, father, brothers or sisters … she
would gaze at the face of her son in whose veins mingled the blood of her
parents – the parents who had cast her aside.
The boy tugged at his mother’s breast. Hamida felt as if the boy was drawing
the milk from her veins and was sucking it out with force, just as his father
had used force to take her. All said and done, he was his father’s son, this
father’s flesh and blood and shaped like him. He had been planted inside her
by force, nourished inside her womb against her will – and was now sucking
the milk from her breasts, whether she liked it or not.
The thought went round and round in her head with insidious insistence: This
boy … this boy’s father … all mankind … all men … men who gnaw a
woman’s body like a dog gnawing a bone and like a dog consuming it.
The boy continued to suck at his mother’s breasts, while Hamida’s mind
continued to fill and empty like the buckets of a Persian wheel.
Out of this conflict of hate and love, love and hate, were born Hamida’s son
and Hamida’s love for her husband, Rashida.
The weather had turned cool; the nip in the air presaged the advent of winter.
One morning Hamida went out to the fields in the very early hours, as was her
habit.
It was still dark when she came to the well used by the Muslims and began to
wash herself. In the grey light of the dawn she recognized the girl, Kammo,
who lived in the same lane as her parents. Kammo put her pitcher on the
parapet of the well to rest herself. She quickly picked up her pitcher when she
saw Hamida coming towards her; but it was too heavy and she could not raise
it to her shoulder. It began to slip in her hands; she grabbed it by the neck to
prevent it from falling. A cry escaped her lips: “Mother!”
Hamida went up to Kammo. She wanted to take the heavy pitcher from the
shoulders of the frail, twelve-year-old girl, but hesitated to make the move.
Kammo managed to hoist it on to her head.the two began to walk side by side.
Hamida saw that it was the same barefooted Kammo, in the same coarse,
hand-spun, green cotton salwar and striped shirt frayed at the shoulders and
patched all over; her dirty dupatta was in tatters and her hair untidily scattered
over her face. Hamida had never particularly wanted to befriend Kammo, but
that morning she was impelled to make a friendly gesture.
“It is very late,” remarked Kammo, buried beneath the pitcher. She wanted to
be reassured that it was not really as late as she thought.
“The dawn hasn’t come up yet,” replied Hamida in a soothing voice. The girl
was reassured; she put her pitcher on the ground. Hamida also stopped.
Kammo’s pale face lit up with a faint smile. Hamida had never before seen
the girl smile. She always curled her lips up in a very curious way, as if
sucking something.
“Kammo, do you come around this time every day?”
“I am rather late today; I will get a thrashing,” replied Kammo, grabbing the
pitcher again. The smile drained from her face like the colour running off a
cloth. The old melancholic look returned.
“Is the old woman related to you?”
“She is my aunt.” The pitcher began to slip down Kammo’s arm.
“I can carry the pitcher for you,” said Hamida, without extending her hand.
Everyone knew that she was a Muslim … Hamida the wife of Rashida. And
Kammo was a Hindu girl.
“You will pollute my pitcher,” replied Kammo unabashedly.
“I will not touch the water. You can scrub the pitcher from outside.” Said
Hamida laughing. Kammo also sniggered, but she did not let go of her
pitcher. The two continued walking.
They had barely gone a few steps when Kammo stumbled. Hamida caught the
pitcher, but Kammo fell on a heap of rubble and sprained her foot. Hamida
put aside the pitcher and massaged Kammo’s ankle with her palms. The pain
subsided and Kammo was able to walk again. Every time her foot hurt, she
cried, “Hai Ma!” The girl heaped all her misfortunes on her dead mother.
Hamida had often heard Kammo’s aunt grumble. “They had the wretch to
torture us!” When her mother died, Kammo’s father had taken another woman
and moved to the city. Her father’s mistress refused to have anything to do
with Kammo. So Kammo was abandoned by her father as well. People often
say that when a person’s mother dies, even a real father becomes a stepfather.
It was Hamida’s ill luck that her real father had become a stepfather before
becoming a widower, and her real mother had, without being a widow,
become like a stepmother.

The eastern horizon turned grey. The outlines of the houses could be seen
clearly. The two girls arrived at the corner of the street and, becoming
apprehensive lest someone see them, Kammo took over herp itched and
limped homewards, while Hamida quickened her steps.
That afternoon, while Hamida was trying to pacify her child, her outer door
was pushed open and Kammo burst in. Hamida put Javed aside and took
Kammo in her arms. Kammo had almost forgotten to cry, but the warmthof
Hamida’s embrace brought a flood of tears to her eyes. Hamida’s maternal
instincts were roused. She wished to mother the unwanted Kammo, to spoil
her, to let her be petulant and indulge in her tantrums; to take her in her lap
and walk about with Kammo in her arms; to kiss her over and over again.
But Hamida was a Muslim and Kammo was a Hindu. And even though she
still thought of herself as Pooro, she knew that Kammo would not eat
anything in her home. Hamida was very much wanted to break pieces of
bread and feed Kammo with her own hands; to hold the bowl of milk for the
girl while she drank.
Hamida again massaged Kammo’s foot, rubbed it with ghee and pressed on it
wads of warm cotton-wool.
Suddenly, Kammo became impatient. Her aunt’s grim face looked like a
hatchet before her mind’s eye. She took up the sewing needle for which she
professed to have come. Hamida also gave her a lump of gur and almonds.
Kammo seldom changed her clothes. She wore the same tattered shirt in
summer and on the coldest days of winter. She never had anything on her feet,
Hamida gave her a new pair of slippers. Kammo explained to her aunt, “I
found them in the sugarcane field.”
Only in the dim light of the early mornings did Hamida dare to help Kammo
with her pitcher of water. And Kammo had to make all kinds of excuses to
visit Hamida; sometimes to grind chickpeas in the hand mill; sometimes to
pound pieces in the mortar. Little Javed got to know Kammo. Whenever she
failed to turn up, Hamida would chide her on behalf of her son. Hamida and
Kammo behaved towards each other like mother and daughter, as well as like
two close friends. Hamida gave Kammo things to eat and clothes to wear,
Kammo’s frail body began to fill up; her sallow, sunken cheeks became pink
and rounded. Hamida helped her wash her hair and then oiled and plaited it.
One early morning Kammo came while it was still dark.
She burst into tears as soon as she entered. She looked like a squeezed lemon.
Hamida hugged the girl to her bosom and kissed her on the forehead, but
Kammo could not control her sobs. Her dupatta and her hands were wet with
tears.
“My aunt says that if I come to your house again she will suck the blood out
of my body,” sobbed Kammo. She put her head in Hamida’s lap.
“Why? Wat have I done?” asked Hamida.
“Aunty says she has heard that you have run away from your home and I may
do the same,” explained Kammo, stifling her sobs.
The morning light was getting brighter. Hamida felt something snap inside
her. That was the last she saw of Kammo.

Hamida had suffered much; the suffering had aged her. She was only twenty
years old, but these twenty years had taught her more than she could ever
have learnt in an age. She had become as serious and as thoughtful as an old
philosopher. Only she could not put her many thoughts into words. Her
emotions rose like foam on the crest of a wave, were battered against the
rocks of experience and subsided once more into the water.
Occasionally Hamida called on Rahima’s two wives she was not particularly
interested in them but was drawn towards a young, sallow-faced girl who
lives next door. The girl had large, melancholic eyes which she lowered every
time she saw Hamida. Hamida had a feeling that the girl wanted to get to
know her and that they had much in common. She was not wrong. She learnt
that the girl had been married two years earlier and had been ill since her
wedding day. No one knew what it was that troubled the girl; her skin had
become the colour of a spring onion; her face, yellow like a stick of turmeric.
Some people said that she was possessed by a spirit; others, that she had
contracted some unknown disease.
Hamida and the girl began to exchange smiles when they passed each other in
the village. Then Hamida sent some yarn to the girl’s mother to have it woven
into a bed-sheet. This gave her the opportunity to get to know the girl. Her
name was Taro.
Taro was due to return shortly to her husband. She had been getting fainting
fits; she had them every time she was due to go back to her house. Each time
she returned to her parents, she was thinner than before. Her bones stuck out
of her flesh. But no one did anything about her.
One day Taro happened to be by herself. Hamida sat down beside her and
began to ply her with questions: “Taro, surely there is someone who can
diagnose your trouble!”
“No, not a soul.”
“Has someone felt your pulse?”
“I have had my fill of preserves wrapped in silver paper and bottles of
arrack.”
“Taro, you must tell me: Why do you allow this disease to destroy your life?”
“It will only lighten the weight of the world.”
“You don’t have so much to weigh down the world with; your going will not
make much difference. Have you ever thought of the feelings of your mother,
who took the trouble to bring you up?”
“I could not care less,” replied Taro brusquely. “She will shed a few tears and
then forget about me.” After a while she burst out: “When parents give away
a daughter in marriage, they put a noose around her neck and hand the other
end of the rope to the man of their choice.”
“May be it’s the water of your husband’s village that is upsetting your
stomach,” suggested Hamida.
“A woman has to get used to every kind of water,” said Taro with some
passion.
“Taro, I am your friend. Why don’t you tell me?”
“What can I tell you?” when a girl is given away in marriage, God derives her
of her tongue, so that she may not complain.
“You are absolutely right,” agreed Hamida.
“My parents have no use for me; parents never have for a married daughter.
And my husband has no use for me, because another woman is mistress of
both his heart and house.”
“Taro, do you mean to tell me that your husband was already married?” asked
Hamida surprised. “Why did your parents give you to him?”
“They did not know. Besides, at the time he was only keeper her.”
“Surely, his parents must have known.”
“They certainly knew. She was a low-caste woman. His parents wished to get
a daughter-in-law of their own caste.”
“Did they haven o thought for the girl they proposed to get as their daughter-
in-law?”
“Sister, who bothers about other people’s sorrows! Besides, they say” ‘We
feed and clothe the girl. We give her money to spend. What has she to
grumble about?”
“As if food and clothing were all a woman wanted!”
said Hamida.
“For two years I have had to sell my body for a mess of pottage and a few
rags. I am like a whore … like a common prostitute … “Taro clenched her
fists; her eyes turned up in their sockets showing only the whites; her body
stiffened like a plank of wood.
There was no one in the house. Hamida began to press the girl’s limbs and
massage the soles of her feet. Taro came to in a little while, but continued to
mumble: “Don’t touch me! I am unclean! Don’t you see, I am a slut, a whore,
a common tart …” The girl was babbling away foolishly when her mother
entered.
“What am I to do?” wailed the mother, when she heard Taro. “As if fate had
not enough shafts for me, this girl adds her barbed words to kill me! She and
her brother will prove the death of us. He’s picked up strange ideas at his
college in Lahore and has stuffed the girl’s brain with a lot of nonsense.”
“Amma, you can’t deny it’s been very hard for her,” protested Hamida.
“Once we give away a daughter our lips are sealed. It’s up to her husband to
treat her as he likes. It is a man’s privilege,” explained the mother.
“Only my lips are sealed and my feet put in fetters,” exploded Taro. “There is
no justice in the world; nor any God. He can do what he likes; there is no God
to stop him. God’s fetters were meant only for my feet.”
Taro had a second fit. Her fists were clenched and her legs stiffened. Her
mother splashed water on to her face and poured a few drops into her mouth.

Hamida was taken aback. This was the first time she had come across a girl
who had such views and who could speak her mind so boldly. She had often
wanted to say things like that herself, but had never dared. Taro continued to
mumble: “This is a big fraud. I have been swindled … I was never married …
You are lying; the whole lot of you are liars … Why do you hold me? Let me
alone. Get away from me …” She punctuated her words by kicking her heels
in the ground.
“Taro pull yourself together. Don’t blurt out everything that comes into your
mind. What will people say if they overhear you?” chided the mother, her
eyes brimming with tears.
Taro would come to and then collapse like a deflated sack.
“Don’t say such stupid things when you return to your husband’s home,”
continued her mother. “It does not matter how he behaves. Allah is always
there to see whatever goes on. Allah was witness to your marriage.”
“Mother, if Allah was a witness to my wedding, then Allah perjured himself. I
was never wed … never …” Taro gaped vacant-eyed at the beams in the roof.
Hamida wondered how Taro, who could dare to say such things, was yet
unable to break out of the perfidious institution of marriage.
It was late in the afternoon. Hamida rose with a sigh. She had seen other
people’s sorrows. They made her own troubles appear very small. She had
heard of houses that were not homes. Taro’s story made her own home appear
like a haven of refuge.
Hamida wanted to forget that Rashida had abducted and wronged her. She
longed fervently to make love to him. After all, he was her husband and the
father of her son. This alone was true; this alone mattered. The rest was mere
prattle and a lie.
Hamida settled down in Sakkar as if she had always belonged to the village.
She showed no desire to go anywhere else. (“I did not come here of my own
will, nor will I leave of my own will,” she used to say). Her son Javed was
almost two. He could run about on his own. He was the apple of his father’s
eye. Rashida loved his son’s childish prattle and the endearing way he clung
to his legs and called him “Abba!” The two played hide-and-seek in the
evenings and had lots of fun. The boy was full of mischief. He would put his
hands in the wet clay with which his mother plastered her oven; he would mix
turmeric and chillis in her buttermilk. The home was full of the child’s
contagious laughter.
One day a woman came to their door selling toys. Javed dragged his mother
to the toy-seller. Hamida gave the woman a handful of grain and some old
garments in exchange for a straw rattle. She was still talking to her when she
heard a lot of commotion. Suddenly a woman came running down the street,
screaming like one possessed by the devil. People picked up their children
and bolted the doors of their houses.
The woman wore only a salwar, which covered her from waist to ankles; her
belly and breasts were bare. The sun had scorched her skin to the semblance
of black parchment. Her hair was tangledand hung like ropes about her
shoulders. Her body was cakedwith dirt and appeared as if she had never
washed since the day she was born. She waved her hands in the air and spread
out her legs in an ungainly way. She could not walk, she could only run like
an animal. Her laughter was fiendish. When she opened her mouth she bared
a row of uneven teeth. Her thin, charred body gave no clue to her age. She
was more like a skeleton than a living person.
Before anything could be done to prevent her, the mad woman snatched a
handful of clay toys from the toy-seller’s basket and ran away. The poor toy-
seller looked askance at her depleted basket. The mad woman’s hysterical
laughter and ghoulish shrieks were heard in Sakkar for a long time. She had
come to stay there.
She wandered about the lanes. She ate whatever she could find in the fields.
Sometimes a village woman would give her a couple of chapattis which she
would devour ravenously. Many gave her their old shirts to cover her naked
bosom. She would pluck off the buttons and tear up the shirt. It would hang
round her neck in tatters till she tore these up as well and was bare-bosomed
again. At times, she even discarded her salwar and walked about without a
stitch of clothing. Then some woman would cover her waist with an old
salwar and another would drape her breasts with a discarded shirt. And the
process would start all over again.
The mad woman became a part of the village. Whenever the urchins teased
her, some elder would rebuke them roundly. The woman became a source of
terror to the small children. If they were naughty, all their mothers had to say
was : “If you don’t behave, the mad woman would carry you off.” And they
would become like little angels.

The woman found an empty shed in the outskirts of the village. Some kind
soul spread a tattered mat on the floor. People began to leave food and water
for her. The shed became her home and she got into the habit of spending her
nights in it.
The woman did no harm to anyone; she never stole anything. She only took
what others discarded and filled her belly with the scraps they gave her. All
she did was to run about and laugh with mad abandon.
The woman’s thin frame began to fill up. Her waist began to spread out. The
village woman tried to cover up her nakedness and persuade her to stay
indoors; but nothing would penetrate her mind. She continued the way she
was, laughing hysterically and running about.
One evening the elders of the Panchayat took the mad woman by the hand
and left her in the dark at some distance from Sakkar. “Out of sight, out of
mind!” They assured one another. “Let some other village take care of her
now.” Next day before noon she was back in Sakkar roaming about the lanes
just as before. Her mad laughter could be heard in the fields.
“What sort of a man could have done this to her?” the women of Sakkar asked
each other. They clenched their teeth in anger …” He must be a savage beast
to put a mad woman in this condition.”
“She is neither young nor attractive; she is just a lump of flesh without a mind
to go with it … a living skeleton … a lunatic skeleton … a skeleton picked to
its bones by kites and vultures,” thought Hamida.
The mad woman’s belly grew bigger day by day.

In the early hours of the morning, while it was still dark, Hamida went out of
her home, as washer habit. She took the footpath that led to the fields. She
had barely gone a few yards when she noticed the outlines of a human form
beside the trunk of a tree. She picked up courage and tiptoed towards the
recumbent figure. It was the mad woman. She was dead as a block of stone,
and between her legs was a new-born baby, still attached to its mother by the
umbilical cord.
An agonized groan escaped Hamida’s throat. She shut her eyes and swayed as
if she was going to fall. Cold shivers ran up and down her spine. She
mustered up courage and ran back home to fetch her husband.
Rashida came and felt the mad woman’s pulse. It was not necessary, for death
was clearly stamped on her face. But death had not claimed her child, whose
heart beat with all the vigour of the primeval life-force. It was sucking its left
thumb. Hamida covered the body with an old sheet she had brought with her.
“In the name of Allah!” muttered Rashida as he severed the cord. Hamida
wrapped the baby in her dupatta.
The news spread in the village like the morning mist. Women dropped the
plates in which they were kneading flour; they left the fires burning in their
hearths and buried to Hamida’s house. Hamida had bathed and dressed the
baby. It lay in a cot as soft and fair as a wad of cottonwool. It sucked the end
of the cloth which Hamida had soaked in warm milk. Javed watched over his
little guest with a sense of ownership.
“May Allah bless you!”
“May Allah fill your home with plenty!”
“May your children live long years!”
“You have earned merit in the eyes of Allah!”
The women came and blessed Hamida. They lauded her act of mercy and
went back to their homes. The elders buried the mad woman’s corpse.
In the evening Rashida cleansed the glass of the hurricane lantern and lit the
wick. The babe blinked its big eyes; it was fascinated by the flame. Hamida
peered at the babe. What wretch could have lusted after the charred body of
the man woman – she asked herself. Did she consent to the act or was she
raped? Did the man realize what he was perpetrating on a lunatic woman? Did
he know what would happen to the seed he had planted in the vagrant’s
womb? The poor woman was not even aware of the fact that she was going to
give birth to a boy. How did she suffer the pains of labour? Did no midwife
feel compassion for her? Her shrieks must have been lost in the loneliness of
the dark night; she must have wrestled with the gusts of wind and writhed in
agony on the cold, hard ground! But nature’s laws are immutable. The child
ignored its mother’s agony and came out into the world. And its mother
perished in the final process of giving it birth.
Hamida dozed off to sleep beside the cot. She dreamt of Rashida galloping
away with her lying across the saddle; she dreamt of his keeping her in a
gardener’s hut for three nights and days and then throwing her out; she dreamt
of her turning insane and running about the village lanes with a life
quickening in her womb‥
. and then giving birth to a child under the shade of a tree. The child was
exactly like Javed. It tugged at her breasts and tried to suck with its toothless
gums. It howled because there was no milk.
Hamida woke up with a start. Her new baby was yelling with all its might.
She picked it up and put it against her bosom. She looked a little
apprehensively at Javed, who had just fallen asleep. She glanced towards
Rashida, who was sitting beside the hearth in the courtyard. He had not left
her, nor thrown her out. She was safely installed in his house. He was a kind
husband. He had given her the handsome, curly-headed Javed. And now her
family had increased. God had himself sent her another son. Hamida got up,
kissed her new son on the forehead.
Javed had her breast for two full years and had not been weaned very long.
Hamida had heard that white cumin-seed brought milk to a woman’s breasts.
She swallowed a palmful with a tumbler of milk. Three days later Hamida’s
breasts filled with milk. She offered them to the child of the man woman of
Sakkar as if he were her own son.

As a tiny spark glimmering in a cake of cow-dung spreads its fire to the others
heaped over it, gossip about the foundling began to be slowly whispered
around the village. “The mad woman was a Hindu. The Muslims have
grabbed a Hindu child. Under the very noses of the Hindus, they have
converted a Hindu child into a Muslim …”
As a cat takes its kittens from one place to another, Hamida clasped the
foundling to her bosom and took him from the front courtyard to the rooms at
the backof the house. Even within the seclusion of her walls, she got to know
what was being said about the child and its dead mother.
The Hindus called a meeting to discuss the matter. “Are we sure that the mad
woman was a Hindu?” asked one. “I have heard it with my own ears. She was
the daughter of a rich merchant of Lala-Musa. Her husband’s second wife
mixed some sort of poison in her food which made her lose her mind,” replied
another.
“I am told that her people put her in chains and did their best to keep her at
home; but it was in her kismet to be a tramp,” explained one.
:With my own eyes I saw the sacred ‘Om’ tattooed on her left arm,” said a
man, slapping the ground to invest his words with an air of finality.
“Friends, what perfidy is this! We have our eyes wide open and they throw
dust into them.”
“Shame on us all! We have let them convert a Hindu boy into a Muslim, as if
it were the most natural thing in the world.”
Some were for forgetting the whole business: “Friends, let it be. We do not
know what evil spirit sired the child. Who wants to saddle himself with the
son of a bitch?” “Idiot!” retorted a hothead at the top of his voice. “The issue
is between our faith and theirs. If we let this matter go unchallenged today,
tomorrow they will want all of us to become Muslims. Don’t you see how
uppish their behaviour has become?”
The atmosphere in the room was suffocating with hate. “We will take back the
boy; we’ll see who will dare to stay our hand.”
“It won’t be much trouble bringing him up. We can raise a subscription and
pay the water-carrier’s woman to look after him.”
“Surely we can’t be such a useless lot as not to be able to afford the
upbringing of one little boy!” “There is no knowing that the boy will not
turnout to be a deaf mute or a lunatic like his mother; or he may take after …”
“Why should that matter? When he grows up he can sweep the temple floor.
All he’ll want is two square meals a day. Surely we can provide that!”
They applauded each other’s courage. There was much back-slapping and
braggadocio.
“The water-carrier’s wife may have her own views on the subject. We had
better find out from her before we do anything.”
“She wouldn’t dare to refuse us. We’ll cross her palm with silver and then
broach the subject.”
“We are counting our chickens before they are hatched … Let the boy grow
up a little …or will they be circumcising him?”
“Are you wanting to back out now? If you cannot do even this little bit for
your faith, then go and drown yourselves in the sea!” “If someone as much as
diverts water from your fields to his own before his time, you think nothing of
splitting open his skull. But when it comes to being robbed of your sons, your
mouths are covered with mildew.”
Once again the atmosphere was charged with hate, as thick as the smoke of a
coal-fire.
Thereafter, the Hindus began to give Rashida black looks whenever they
passed him in the village. Rashida pretended to ignore them, but he warned
his wife and mildly suggested that it was not worth their while to make an
issue of the subject. Every time Rashida brought up the matter, Hamida’s
heart would sink. She had nurtured the tiny bundle of skin and bone with her
own breasts for six months, till he too had started to look as fat and chubby as
her own Javed. He had come to look upon Hamida as his mother; his eyes
followed her as she moved about the house. He stretched his arms out for
Rashida as any child would towards its father. Why has the Hindus not
thought of taking the babe on the first day? Why had they let her swallow
palmfuls of cumin-seed and turn the blood in her veins to milk in her breasts?
Why had they made her wash the child’s soiled garments till her hands
become hard and calloused? Why? Why? Why?
One day the Hindu elders of the village sent for Rashida.
The saliva dried up in Hamida’s mouth. Would they be nasty to Rashida?
Would they insult him? She had brought it on her husband’s head. She
pleaded with Rashida to take her with him. She would give them all the
answers. She would plead with them for the boy. But Rashida would not have
any of this and went alone to the house where they had summoned him.
A group of Hindu elders lay sprawling on charpoys laid out in a courtyard;
they were expecting Rashida and his Muslim friends. Rashida came alone and
in a matter-of-fact tone enquired after their health. An uneasy silence
followed.
“Well, what do you intend doing? Are you or are you not going to return the
boy to us?” asked one very gravely as he passed the pipe of the hookah to his
neighbour. “What right have I to give away or keep a life? That only Allah,
whose gift it is, can decide,” replied Rashida, touching his forehead and
looking up at the sky.
“This is honeyed talk; get down to realities!” snapped one angrily.
“Allah out of His infinite mercy picked on me to save the life of the child; if it
had been a couple of hours later, the boy might have been devoured by a tom-
cat or a pie-dog. Allah had decreed a longer life for him…”
“True! If God decrees a longer span of life, no earthly power can cut it short.
But you are no doubt aware that his mother was a Hindu woman. We cannot
tolerate the taking away of a Hindu child?’
“Good friends, I did not know who she was, Hindu or what. She ate the food
from Hindu homes as well as from Muslim …”
“She was insane. You are not out of your mind, are you?” snapped one.
“If you had taken over the child on the very first day and brought him up, I
would not have said a word. When we picked him up he was a handful of
bones. My wife has nourished him up with infinite care for six months and
saved his life. And now you are suddenly concerned about his future. Friends,
beware of the wrath of Allah! It is for Him to decree who will bring up the
child, you or i. do you think I will get out of it?” There was a tone of sincerity
in Rashida’s voice. Some of the Hindus were for leaving Rashida with the
halter he had put round his own neck.
“We don’t want this business to get out of hand,” said one of the Hindu
gently. “The child is not related either to you or to any of us. This is however
a matter of religion and one should not stand in its way. Why put your life in
jeopardy? If somebody takes it into his head to do you harm, don’t you say
we did not warn you! You should realize what is best for you and give us the
child of your own free will. If you want to be reimbursed for the expense you
have incurred, we will pay you.”
“Indeed … mostly certainly,” chorused the others.
“Allah, have mercy on me!” exclaimed Rashida, holding both his ears with
his hands.
“We have the water-carrier’s woman here. Some of us will accompany you to
your house and bring away the child. We will purify him and re-convert him
to Hinduism.”
“For the last time, I beg of you,” pleaded Rashida, with the palms of his hands
joined as if in prayer. “Have compassion for the child and let him stay where
he is. My wife is looking after him as if she had borne him in her womb.”
“We have been straight with you and pointed out the right course for you to
take. If you know your interests, then act like a wise man and come along
with us – or take the consequences. We too know that ghee only sticks to the
crooked finger.”
The Hindu elders stood up to indicate that the argument was at an end. The
water-carrier’s woman emerged, her head covered with her dupatta. There
was no way jout. Rashida got up and took the party to his house. Hamida
stood on the threshold, with her eyes fixed on the lane. She saw Rashida’s
dejected look and the people with him. Her heart sank. It reminded her of the
day when she had been snatched away from her mother, separated from her
father and estranged from her own brothers and sisters. The foundling had
become a part of her own flesh and blood. Hamida ran indoors, picked up the
child and clasped him to her bosom.
Rashida entered his courtyard like one who had lost his way. He did not have
to say a word. Nor did Hamida ask him for an explanation. The water-
carrier’s woman hesitated to take the child from Hamida’s clasp.
“Hurry up!” Its getting late,” ordered one of the Hindus in a harsh tone. “We
have other things to do.”
The water-carrier’s wife took the foundling from Hamida’s arms. The boy’s
hands clutched Hamida’s dupatta and pulled it off her head. The water-
carrier’s wife forced open the child’s hand to release the dupatta. The child
felt the rough touch of unfamiliar hands and began to cry.
Hamida sank to the ground. She heard the boy’s crying recede further and
further down the lane. Milk continued to ooze from her breasts and wet her
shirt. That night no food was cooked in Rashida’s home. Javed asked his
father, “Abba, where have they taken my little brother? Abba, when will my
brother come home?” Rashida looked at his son and hung his head.
Hamida thought of Kammo and then of the foundling. Why did she have to
pick up flowers which others had plucked and cast aside? What inner
compulsion made her water withered buds and try to revive them? And yet
they remained estranged from her and left in her solitude! The only one who
stayed by her was Rashida. He was her man, the father of her son.
The next day passed. And the following day. On the fourth day, the villages
could talk of nothing but the fate of the foundling. Everyone was saying: The
boy is on the brink of death; he throws up every drop of milk that goes down
his throat.”

Hamida beat her head against the wall and shed bitter tears. Her breasts were
bursting with milk and the boy had been weaned away from her. What an
abyss yawned between her aching breasts and the child’s hungry lips!
“The boy was weaned too suddenly; he was bound to sicken.”
“If the child dies, our village will surely fall under a curse.”
“I have been begging of my husband to put some sense into the heads of the
others and take the infant back from where they brought him.” “We have
children of our own. A child’s curse can be terrible.”
“My husband is exceedingly pig-headed! I told him from the very beginning
that those who try to take things out of other people’s hearths only burn their
fingers.”
“I hear that last night the water-carrier’s woman gave the boy cold milk to
drink. He hasn’t been the same ever since.”
“How could a child as frail as that cope with buffalo milk? Naturally he got
sick at once.”
“No, no, no – it’s sorrow that’s killing the child. From the day he was born
he’s seen no other woman than that Hamida. How can you expect him to get
used to another person!”
“Poor child! He hasn’t got a tongue to say what he wants.”
The foundling was the only topic of conversation among the Hindu women.
The fourth day passed. And the fifth. The next morning three men burst into
Rashida’s courtyard.
“Take him! We leave his life in your custody! If you can save him, he is
yours!” They deposited a yellow, waxen doll wrapped in white linen in
Rashida’s lap. The child was in a state of coma.
Anger surged up in Rashida’s face. He had a strong desire to thrash the men;
he wanted to shout: “Weren’t you the fellows who offered me those silver
coins to compensate me for my six months of service: Now that the child has
one foot in the grave you want to give him back to me” Take him wherever
you wish to and get out of here!” But he saw the sad expression on Hamida’s
face and decided to swallow his pride.
A week later the villager saw the foundling gurgling and playing merrily in
Hamida’s courtyard.
Rahima’s old mother was gradually losing the sight of both her eyes. One of
her two daughters-in-law had died giving birth to a girl; the other was not on
very good terms with her. The old woman was quite vigorous for her age. She
looked after the kitchen; she could spin and weave and had filled the house
with bed-sheets of different sizes; she could sort out grain, grind flour in the
hand-mill, fluff up cotton for spinning, churn the milk. She managed to do all
this even with her failing eye-sight. Nevertheless, her daughter-in-law taunted
her and said that once the hag lost her sight no one would so much as give her
water in a bowl of clay.
One day Rahima’s mother came to Hamidaand begged her to take a fortnight
off and accompany her to another village, where a man was reported to be
able to cure weak eyesight.
“Amma, where does the Clever One reside?” asked Hamida.
“Daughter, he’s not very clever. The Holy Ones have blessed him with powers
of healing. And he owns a spring. I am told that if one washes one’s eyes with
the spring water after the morning prayer, it cures eye ailments in a few days.
They say that many people who had lost their sight have come back with
vision. He also makes mud packs of the clay from the bottom of the spring.”
“Where does he live, Amma?” asked Hamida again.
“At Rattoval. The Holy One has had some tents put up near the spring for the
comfort of people who come from distant places.”
The name Rattoval pierced through Hamida’s ears like a needle. From the
fields of Chatto she had longingly gazed at the footpath which led to Rattoval.
That was the way Ram Chand would have taken. He was to have come on a
gaily-caparisoned horse, as bridegrooms do; that was the way her bridal
palanquin carried by four bearers would have taken.
A mist rose before Hamida’s eyes; her mind was full of unfulfilled desires.
Could she not visit his village just once.
“Amma, I will go with you.” The words escaped Hamida’s lips.
“May Allah give your husband and children long lives! May your breasts fill
to feed many sons!” The blessings poured forth from the old woman.
“Amma, you will have to get round Javed’s father. I am not going to say a
word to him.” “He is like my own son; he will not dare to disobey me.”
For Hamida the night was full of argument with herself, “What is Ram Chand
to me? I will not so much as raise my eyes if he passes by! What have I to do
with his village” He is welcome to live in it as long as he likes. Amma will
have her eyes treated and then we will come back. Silly woman, why must
you yearn to see him? He must have put you out of his mind like a bad dream
…”
Rashida did not object to his wife’s going to Rattoval. Javed stayed with his
father. Hamida took the younger boy with her. An old servant of Rahima’s
was sent with the women.
The servant and the child took their seat on front alongside the ekka driver.
The two women were in the rear with their luggage. The movement of the
ekka rocked the baby to sleep.
In a little while Hamida also dozed off. She dreamed that she was reclining on
an embroidered cushion inside a silver palanquin. Her arms were weighed
down with bangles; her palms were dyed red with henna.
The palanquin lurched sideways and her dupatta slid off her head. When she
adjusted it, the tassel-bells on her arms jingled.
Rahima’s mother shook Hamida by the shoulder. “It’s long after noon. You
must have something to eat.”
Hamida woke with a start. The palanquin, the bangles, the tassel-bells and the
henna-marks vanished. She jfound herself on the rear seat of the ekka,
alongside Rahima’s mother. The driver had pulled up his ekka at a wayside
village to rest his horse and let his passengers refresh themselves. Rahima’s
mother opened a bundle and handed out fried chapattis to the servant and the
ekka driver and shared the others with Hamida.
“Let’s get over the eating as quick as we can,” said the ekka driver. “I must
give my horse rest for the night, as I have to return early in the morning.”
They finished their meal and clambered on to the ekka. Hamida put her head
against the side and within a few moments was back in her gently-swaying
bridal palanquin on the unending road to Rattoval. The sound of pipes and
drums came to her ears and all at once the palanquin was surrounded by
hands of pipers and drummers … That must be Rattoval, where they were
welcoming the new bride … The girls were singing … A woman lifted her
bridal veil … Then somebody placed a crying child in her lap … The more
the child cried, the more the women laughed; it would bring good luck to the
groom …
Rahima’s mother was shaking her by the shoulder. “How sleepy you are
today! The boy has been crying for a long time.”
“We passed a big procession, with one band of musicians after another. You
slept through the racket,” said the servant.
The ekka was close to Rattoval. They alighted near the spring where the Holy
One had made his centre. In place of tents, he had raised a few mud huts for
the pilgrims.
The servant arranged the baggage in the hut assigned to them and
accompanied Rahima’s mother to see the Holy One. Hamida spread a sheet on
a charpoy and put the boy to sleep. She stood on the threshold of the hut and
gazed across the fields. At long last she had come to Rattoval … Nobody had
sent for her. No one had come to receive her. No one played a pipe or sang a
song to welcome her. No one slipped a bangle on to her arm; she heard no
rattle of cowrie-shells hanging in tassels from her bangles; not a leaf of henna
had been crushed to paint her palms.
The Holy One told Rahima’s Mother that her treatment would take thirteen
days. The servant returned to Sakkar the next day. The two women were left
with the child to look after themselves.

The days went by without Hamida once entering the village. She neither had
any excuse nor the daring. And yet she wanted to see what Ram Chand’s
house looked like; to see him without being recognized by him or anyone
else. She got more and more restless as the days went by. An old, long-
forgotten song came back to her:
We go as we came.
Nobody welcomed our coming;
Nobody waves us farewell.
O Lord, let him know we came!
The tears welled up in her eyes; she had to stifle her sobs. She left the boy in
the care of Rahima’s mother and wandered about the fields.
“Would I be able to recognize him if I met him? she asked herself. “I hardly
knew what he looked like, and that was many years ago!”
She often asked the peasants working in the fields: “Brother, whose land is
this? I want a few carrots. We are strangers here.” The peasants named
different people. No one ever named Ram Chand.
One day, when a peasant really named Ram Chand. Hamida could not believe
her ears. Her head began to whirl. She sat down under an acacia tree. The
strength drained from her legs and her feet became as cold as ice. A few
moments later, the same peasant said: “Here comes the master.” He gathered
the chick-peas he had cut and went away towards the well.
Hamida could not hold back her tears; she did not go behind the acacia tree or
wipe them away with her dupatta. She could hardly see his face through the
stream that poured from her eyes.
“Bibi, what is the matter with you?” enquired Ram Chand, stopping in front
of her. Hamida could not say a word.
“What ails you, Bibi?” Hamida heard him ask again. She was tongue-tied.
The tears came in torrents, but not a word issued from her lips.
Ram Chand looked worried and glanced around for help. Before he could do
anything, Hamida walked away through the fields like someone in a trance.
That was their last evening in Rattoval. The servant had come back from
Sakkar to fetch them. They were to leave next morning.
Hamida could not sleep that night. “I did not say even a word to him … What
could I have told him when he asked me who I was?” A hundred thousand
answers came to her mind and the evening scene was recalled over and over
again.
The dawn had not yet greyed the eastern horizon. Hamida rose from her
charpoy and, like one taken by the hand, seemed to follow a predestined path
to the fields. Even in the dark she found the acacia tree under which the
evening before she had encountered Ram Chand. Hamida picked up a handful
of dust from the spot on which he had stood and reverently smeared it on her
eyelids …
Her palms were still on her eyes when somebody took her hands in his.
Hamida opened her eyes. It was Ram Chand.
“You are Pooro,” he said. “All through the night that name has been going
round and round in my head. You are Pooro, arent’ you?” he asked to make
sure.
Hamida’s tongue again refused to utter a sound. She withdrew her hands from
his and turned back towards her hut.
“If you are Pooro, tell me just once,” pleaded Ram Chand, following her.
“I’ve spent the whole night in the fields; something told me that you would
come again. My heart tells me that you are Pooro.”
“Pooro has been dead a long time,” she replied. She went away without
turning to look back.

The days went by and added up to months; the months to years. Whenever
Hamida put the earthen vessel to milk on the hearth and heaped dried cow-
dung under it, she thought of the tiny spark in the cow-dung slab which never
went out. There was a spark somewhere deep down within her which also
refused to go out; on the contrary, it too seemed to set others about it on fire.
What was it that weighed her down like a ton of bricks placed on her chest?
What constricted her throat? For some days she swallowed ajwain seeds, with
stale water. She tried drinking bowls of milk diluted with fresh iced water. But
this did not reduce the heat in her body. She wondered if all was well with her
mother – what else could be making her inside churn?
One evening Rashida came home with his face drawn; he looked haggard,
like one risen from a sick-bed. He pretended to be very casual in his talk with
Hamida and Javed. He fondled the little one, as he always did. When he was
eating, Hamida noticed that he was finding it hard to swallow his chapattis
and was washing them down with water.
When they lay beside each on their respective charpoys, Rashida felt the
questioning insistence of Hamida’s mind. He spoke without her prompting:
“One of our tenants came from my village today.”
“From Chatto?” “Yes.”
“Did he bring any news?”
“He said that our crop had been harvested and the wheat had been stacked…”
“And then what happened?”
“Someone set fire to the stacks at night. The entire harvest was destroyed and
not a grain remains. He says the flames shot up and turned the grey sky a
bright red.”
“Was it deliberate?”
“That’s what they suspect.”
“Who could want to do such a thing?”
Rashida did not answer. Hamilda also fell silent. The children were fast
asleep, but no sleep came to the parents.
“What good would it do to anyone to burn another’s property?” asked
Hamilda after much hesitation. Rashida still remained silent. He turned
restlessly from one side to another; he got up many times to drink water. “Put
the boy on another charpoy; I can’t get any sleep with him lying alongside
me,” he said at last.
Hamilda put Javed on another charpoy. Rashida continued to toss as restlessly
as before. He spoke again: “I have heard a wild rumour; I have not been able
to find out whether it is true or false.”
“Tell me.”
Rashida was in no hurry to tell her. Hamilda lost her patience. She got up and
sat beside her husband.
“I am told that a young stranger came to the village. He kept himself aloof.
Some villagers suspect that … that he was your brother.”
“My brother?”
“All this is, of course, from the man who’s come over from Chatto today.”
The only other information Rashida gave her was that the ladhad asked a
peasant about his ancestral home. The villagers suspected that he was the
Sahukar’s son; they had nothing more to go on than their suspicion.
Once more the husband and wife fell silent. Hamida felt little dizzy. She had
not seen her brother for eleven years. He was a young man. She wondered
what he looked like. Would she be able to recognize him if he suddenly
turned up? The thought of his abducted sister must have brought him back.
She forgot about the conflagration. Out of the ashes of the burnt stacks of
wheat she culled a warmth for her brother. Did he set the stacks on fire? Did
he want to settle his score with Rashida’s family and avenge the insult to his
sister? He was young; impetuous blood coursed in his veins.
Hamida realized that she belonged to the people whose year’s harvest had
been reduced to ashes. How could she identify herself with one who was the
perpetrator of the crime! Or may be it was done by someone else and her poor
brother was the innocent victim of suspicion! Her brother in the clutches of
the police! Hamida lay on her charpoy staring at the dark sky. In her mind
arguments followed each other like the buckets of a Persian wheel. When she
finally fell asleep, she dreamed that the whole world ablaze; everything from
the grass on the ground to the tallest peepul was aflame. She saw a handsome
youth sitting calmly by the fire warming his hands. When she awoke she
realized that the trouble that she had treated as indigestion and for which she
had been taking ajwain and milk was not a physical ailment.

Just as a peeled orange falls apart into many segments, the Hindus, Muslims
and Sikhs of the Punjab broke away from each other. As clouds of dust float
over the roads, rumours of “incidents” began to float over the countryside. It
was said that men were being slaughtered in hundreds; rows of houses were
being burnt down; neighbours were slitting each other’s throats. No one’s life
or property was safe.
With her own eyes, Hamida saw men collecting steel weapons and having
their edges sharpened. She heard of families laying in stores of hatchets and
axes. “We will be free; we will have our own government,” everyone was
saying. “We will not let a trace of Hindu blood remain in our country,” they
said openly in the market places.
“Can such things be true?” Hamida asked herself. “Where will all these
millions of people go to?” She gave herself reassuring answers. “It is mass
hysteria. It’s a storm that will blow over in a day or two.”
But people continued to talk evil; nothing they said made sense to Hamida.
She heard wild stories of what was happening in the cities. The streets ran
with blood and were said to be cluttered with human corpses, with no one to
bury or cremate them, the stink from putrefying flesh hung in the air
spreading pestilence. In some cities, barricades were put up to divide the
Muslim zones from the Hindu. News came of battered convoys of Muslims
coming across the frontier. Many had died in India; many had fallen by the
wayside;; and many others had succumbed to their wounds after their journey
was over.
Hamida’s ears burned with rage when she heard of the abduction of Hindu
girls by Muslims and of Muslim girls by Hindus. Some had been forced into
marriage, some murdered, some stripped and paraded naked in the streets.
Thus passed August 15 of the year 1947.
In Hamida’s village they beat drums of joy and hung out green flags with the
crescent moon and star. Every day, with the Muslims foregathered at the
mosque, the faces of the Hindus turned pale, as if they had been smeared with
turmeric.
The Hindus in the villages next to theirs began to flee. They left their cows
tethered; their buffaloes lowed piteously. Their homes and fields became the
haunt of ghosts. They fled during the night, but some were discovered and
killed before they could get very far; others were found murdered many miles
away.
Then it began in her own village, Chatto. The Hindus moved into one home
for safety. They hoarded grain and provisions in the courtyard and no man or
woman stirred out. They were like animals in a cage. Only the Muslims
roamed about free. They broke into the homes of the Hindus and occupied
them.
One morning they decided to assault the house in which the Hindus had
sought refuge. They poured kerosene oil over the windows and doors and put
burning faggots to them. The flames shot up in the sky. The trapped men and
women began to scream. Just then an Indian armed military convoy drove
into the village. The soldiers came in the nick of time, put out the fire and
rescue the inmates. They loaded the petrified, screaming crowd into their
trucks. Three had been badly burnt; fat oozed from them like wax; the flesh
peeled off their bones like parchment; their elbows and knees stuck out like
white stumps. By the time the others were seated, these three were dead.
There was no time to cremate them. The soldiers ignored the protests of their
relatives, dumped their bodies in the lane and drove away.
The village looked deserted. The only non-Muslims left in it were the three
charred corpses in the street. In two days, the crows and pie-dogs had torn
away the flesh. Only the skeletons remained in front of the burnt-down house.
That was not all. One day Hamida saw a band of a dozen or more goondas
pushing a young girl before them. She had not a stitch of clothing on her
person. The goondas beat drums and danced about the naked girl. Hamida
could not find out where they came from or where they were going.
It was a sin to be alive in a world so full of evil, thought Hamida. It was a
crime to be born a girl.
That evening Hamida discovered a young girl hiding in their sugar-cane field.
After dark, Hamida brought the girl home. She was from a refugee
encampment in the neighbouring village and like the others, was awaiting her
turn to be evacuated to India. The camp was guarded by Pakistani soldiers.
After sunset, bands of goondas stole in, picked out women they liked and took
them for the night; they were returned to the encampment in the morning. The
girl had been forced the spend the preceding nine nights with different men.
She escaped from the clutches of her ravishers, lost her way, and when
daylight came hid herself in the sugarcane field where Hamida found her.
Hamida heard the tale with anger and shame. Could the earth soaked with
human blood produce golden corn? Could maize remain fragrant if its roots
were fed with stinking corpses? Would women whose sisters had been
dishonoured bear sons for the despoilers? Hamida hid the girl in one of the
rooms at the back of the house, where they stored their wheat and cattle
fodder. Next morning strangers came to Chatto looking for the girl. They
searched people’s courtyards, but found no trace of her.
The following evening a convoy of refugees passed through Chatto. The men
were on foot, the women and children on bullock-carts along with the
baggage. A few police constables marched at the front and the rear. The
refugees looked crestfallen; misfortune had settled on their faces like a layer
of dust. It was getting dark, so the convoy halted outside Chatto for the night.
The convoy had come from the direction of Rattoval, where Ram Chand
lived. Hamida had once been engaged to him. She was almost certain that
Ram Chand was among its members. Could she see him just once … for the
very last time?
The refugees bartered their trinkets and jewellery to buy food and grain. Some
people from Chatto went out to settle rates and then, under the very eyes of
the constables, sold their maize and barley for their weight in gold and silver.
Hamida did not need any excuse to go to the encampment. She spotted Ram
Chand in the midst of the crowd. “You need food or provisions?” she asked
him casually.
“Yes,” replied Ram Chand. He showed no sign of recognition.
“Have the cash ready. I will bring the things over at night.” She shot a quick
glance at the constables, then turned away.
Hamida told her husband that she meant to get the girl hiding in their house
into the refugee convoy. She gave her a pot full of flour to carry on her head,
took a can of ghee herself and went back to the encampment.
The refugees had tramped all though the day and lay sprawled on the ground.
Although the cloud of death hovered over them like the malevolent spirit of a
vampire bat, they slept as if they had not a care in the world.
The two women slipped past the sentries on their beat and Hamida dumped
the can of ghee on the ground in front of Ram Chand.
“You are Pooro, aent’ you?” asked Ram Chand. “Do you still wish to know?”
Hamida replied. Her tone was charged with recrimination; it was the first and
last complaint she could make to him. Ram Chand lowered his head in shame.
“Have you any news of my mother and father?” she asked anxiously.
“They did not return after the wedding. They …
“Wedding? Whose wedding?” interrupted Hamida.
“After you disappeared, they gave your younger sister in marriage to me.
Your brother was married to my sister at the same time. Your parents left for
Thailand and never came back.”
“My sister … she must be here with you!” This was the first she had heard of
her sister’s marriage to Ram Chand.
“No, your brother came over a few days ago to leave his wife with my
parents. He took your sister back with him.”
“Is your sister, my brother’s wife, with you in the convoy?”
“No.” Ram Chand’s voice faltered; tears filled his eyes. “She was with us
when we left our home. I had my old mother on my back. She was following
us. But she is not with us now.” Ram Chand stuffed the end of his turban into
his mouth to stifle his sobs. “My mother has been beating her breasts and
wailing ever since.” Hamida felt her entrails turn inside her.
“You may be able to find her,” continued Ram Chad. “We don’t even know
whether she is alive or dead.”
“Her name was Lajo, wasn’t it?” Hamida had heard the girl’s name at the time
of her engagement.
“Yes, it is tattooed on her arm.”
The two talked on while the refugees slept and the sentinels went round on
their beat. Then Hamida introduced the girl she had brought with her. “I want
to leave this girl in your custody. Take her into your convoy. When you get to
India try to locate her parents.” Hamida took the girl’s hand and put it into
Ram Chand’s. Ram Chand looked at the girl and nodded. The girl shuffled
from her place and sat behind him. A few minutes later she stretched herself
on the ground and was soon fast asleep.
“If I could only have seen my brother when he came here last time. I would
have been very happy,” said Hamida with a sigh.
“That time … when your fields in Chatto caught fire! Do you remember?”
“Fire? Oh, yes, I remember. Was it true then that it was my brother who did
it?” Hamida recalled Rashida telling her of the rumour.
“Yes. He had come to take you back – by force if necessary – but he could not
find where you lived. He was so enraged that he burnt down Rashida’s crops.”
Hamida felt a strange sense of pride in her brother. He had grown to be a man
and was filled with a desire to avenge the insult to his sister; he had not
forgotten his Pooro. Hamida also realized that her brother had now lost his
wife; someone had quite obviously abducted her. She was not only
herbrother’s wife, she was also Ram Chand’s real sister. And she was in dire
peril.
“Drop me a card when you get to India and give me your address. If I can find
out anything about Lajo, I will let you know.”
They talked all through the night. The eastern horizon began to turn grey. The
sentries started to awaken the refugees to get them moving. Hamida stood up.
She folded the palms of her hands, but no words issued from her lips. As she
turned back, a police constable blocked her retreat with his staff.
“Where do you think you are going?”
“I came to sell grain.”
“How much did you get? Show me the money.”
Hamida put her hand inside her dupatta, took off her silver bracelet and
showed it to the constable. He was satisfied and let her go. It did not cross his
mind that Hindu women seldom wore silver ornaments.
Hamida spent many nights staring at the beams of the roof. In her thoughts
she wondered over the plight of the women – people’s daughters, sisters and
wives – who were forcibly held by strangers under roofs like hers. Among
many such, one was Lajo, Ram Chand’s sister and her own sister-in-law.
Lajo had been married about a year. Maybe she had a child. How was the
child faring? What a misfortune had befallen the wretched mother! If only the
girl she had found in the sugarcane field had been Lajo!
Hamida told Rashida all she had done and fell at his feet to ask his
forgiveness. “Never before have I asked you a favour,” she pleaded. “Find out
about Lajo; you know how best to go about it.”
Rashida took her hands in his; the gesture was enough.
Rashida had a strong feeling that Lajo was still in Rattoval. She had left her
home with her brother but not been able to join the convoy. Obviously,
someone had grabbed her in the same village. Rashida paid two visits to
Rattoval. He brought provisions from different shops to get information. All
he learnt was that a gang had abducted a few girls from the passing convoy.
And the conviction deepened in him that Lajo was one of those girls.
Rashida did not know anyone in Rattoval with whom he could stay and look
around. Then he remembered the Holy Man who lived by the spring and had
treated Rahima’s mother. Hamida’s eyes showed the strain of sleepless nights;
so she had a good enough excuse to go to the spring after her morning prayers
to wash her eyes. Rashida and his wife made a plan. They took their children
with them and went to Rattoval. Hamida made her offering to the Holy One
and took a bundle of khes on her head to sell in the village.

During the day, when the menfolk were at work in the fields and the women
busy with their daily chores. Hamida would boldly enter their courtyards and
dump her bundle on the floor. She would ask a big price for her wares and
seldom strike a bargain. In any case most village folk had a store of durries
and khes which they had made themselves; and many had made quite a haul
from the loot taken from Hindu evacuees. Nothing daunted Hamida and she
went from one house to another. She peered into the rooms. She engaged the
women in conversation and made jokes about what each had got away with.
She asked them about the homes evacuated by the Hindus and in this way was
able to locate Ram Chand’s place. Both she and her husband felt that the man
who had occupied Ram Chand’s house had also taken his sister, Lajo. Hamida
had been to the house more than once, but each time an old woman had
turned her away from the door, saying firmly that she did not want to buy
anything.
One day Hamida forced her way into the old woman’s courtyard. “Amma,
you don’t have to buy anything; just see what I have. I won’t charge you
anything for seeing my things.” She dumped her bundle on the ground, untied
the knot and spread out her wares. “May Allah bless you!” she said, “Give me
a drop of water to slake my thirst. I’ve been out all morning and am parched!”
“You can have a tumbler of buttermilk instead of water. But if you want to
sell your khes or bed-sheets, you should go to the city, where people neither
spin nor card. There’s no shortage of these things in the village,” the old
woman advised her. She turned round and shouted, “Good woman! Fetch a
bowl of buttermilk!”
A young girl emerged from inside a room. She looked emaciated and walked
as if in a trance. Could this be Lajo? “Isn’t the girl keeping well?” Hamida
enquired sympathetically, as she took the bowl of buttermilk from her hands.
“She is all right … just a little out of sorts,” answered the old woman
indifferently.
“Can I have a small lump of rock-salt to stir into the buttermilk?” asked
Hamida after taking a mouthful.
The young woman fetched a lump of salt. While taking it from the girl’s hand,
Hamida pressed one of her fingers. The girl looked somewhat startled but
neither smile nor spoke a word. She looked as pale as a stick of sugar-cane
drained of all its sap. Hamida was sure that even if this was not Lajo, she had
certainly been abducted.
Hamida drank the buttermilk. The girl came to take the empty bowl. Hamida
quickly grabbed her arm: “Let me feel yourpulse; you look as jaundiced as
turmeric.” She said as she pushed back the sleeve on the left. She saw the
name “Lajo” tattooed on it in Devanagari.
“Can you give her a charm or something – something which will make her
feel more at home here? She refuses to cohabit with my boy,” said the old
woman in a heavy voice.
“I have just the sort of charm she needs,” replied Hamida promptly. “It will
make her blossom like the grains of golden corn.”
“I’ll give you anything you ask. Please get it for me,” pleaded the old woman,
grasping the hem of Hamida’s shirt.
“I’ll bring it tomorrow, if Allah wills…” Hamida retied her bundle. The girl
continued to stare like a deaf mute.
Hamida told her husband all that had passed. “I leave the rest to you; you
know how best to act. Life her away just as you lifted me on to your saddle,”
she said with a smile.
“It will not be too difficult to take her away from here, but how will we get
her to join her family? asked Rashida. He also told her of the Government
proclamation ordering people to hand over all abducted person, so that they
could be exchanged for others similarly abducted by Indians. Parents had
been exhorted to receive back their abducted daughters.
A sense of resentment surged in Hamida’s mind. When it had happened to her,
religion had become an insurmountable obstacle; neither her parents nor her
in-laws-to-be had been willing to accept her. And now, the same religion had
become so accommodating! Hamida put aside her personal feelings and
began to think of Lajo’s future. She lay awake a long while. She tried to
calculate the time when the old woman would go out to the fields with
chapattis for her son.

Next morning she put a pinch of ash in a piece of paper and tied it in a rag.
She took her bundle of khes and proceeded towards Lajo’s house.
Hamida prayed to all the saints she knew. She also repeated the names of
Hindu gods and goddesses. She often used to say that Allah was her step-
father or she the step-daughter of Isvara, because neither the one nor the other
had given a fig for her sorrows. But today she was too scared to jest about
such things. She fervently invoked all the gods to help her in her mission and
pushed open the door.
Lajo lay on a charpoy in the courtyard.
“Where is Amma?” Hamida asked as she stepped in.
“She’s gone to the fields,” replied Lajo sitting up. Her face betrayed an
intense interest in the khes seller.
Hamida clasped the girl to her bosom. “You are Lajo… my sister-in-law…!”
she cried. A cry of anguish welled up within Lajo – so intense that it would
have pierced the walls and been heard across the entire countryside. But she
did not let a sound escape her.
“Are you Pooro?” she asked, disengaging herself. She had never met Pooro
before, but she could see the close family resemblance between Pooro and her
own husband. Lajo lowered her eyes and then fell at Hamida’s feet. Hamida
did not have to ask any questions; she simply hugged Lajo to her bosom again
and again.
“Lajo, listen to what I have to say before someone turns up. What time does
the old woman come back?” asked Hamida.
“I don’t know; I know nothing!” cried Lajo. “Take me away with you!”
“What do you think I’ve come here for but to take you?”
“Then take me away!” wailed Lajo.
“Get a hold on yourself, girl! Where can we run to?” she wiped away Lajo’s
tears with her dupatta. “Are you allowed to go out?” she asked.
“No.”
“Surely you go out to the fields in the morning?” “The old woman is always
with me.”
Hamida spoke after a pause. “Tonight happens to be a moonless night. If you
can get to the well outside the village, my Rashida will await you with his
mare.”
Lajo shrank back with fear. Shecould not go out alone in the dark; she also
did not know Rashida. And if she was caught, it would be the end. “How will
I get out of the house?”
“Take your chance, when everyone’s asleep.”
“He drinks. I could give him a drop or two more tonight. But the old woman
sleeps in the courtyard.”
“Doesn’t the old woman take opiniono r something to sleep with?”
“I’ve never noticed.”
“If only you can get to the well…”
“But … but I don’t’ even know him. If you could be there…” “He will get
you away to safety during the night. If I were to come along, neither of us
would be able to get away.”
“I’ve never seen him.”
“You must trust me. I will make him wear this ring on his fingers.” Hamida
showed Lajo the ring she was wearing. Both the girls paused as they heard the
sound of footsteps.
“Perhaps it’s her!”
Hamida sat down on the floor and began to fiddle with the rag containing the
ashes. The footsteps passed by the door and went down the lane. The girls
resumed their conversation.
“I am terrified lest someone catch me on the way,” said Lajo.
“What is written in your kismet will come to pass. But you couldn’t be any
worse off than you are. I think it’s best that I move along now. If the old
woman doesn’t see me today, it will be better…”
“For God’s sake take me with you!” cried Lajo and clung to Hamida like a
child to its mother. Hamida looked nervously at the door while she embraced
Lajo. “Tonight … at midnight …” Hamida disengaged herself, gathered up
her belongings and left.
Lajo stretched herself on the coarse string charpoy. She felt a new life
pulsating in her limbs. She heard the walls echo the words, “Tonight … at
midnight …” She gazed at the brick flooring of the courtyard. This was my
home, the place where I was born, where I was married and from which my
bridal palanquin was taken. I have come back to this very home. But all my
relatives have gone and left my corpse behind to rot. I have become a stranger
in my own home. The home which gave me birth has now become my coffin
… but tonight at midnight I may regain my freedom!”
The old woman undid the latch of the outer door.
“Has the khes seller woman been in? She promised to come today,” she asked
straight away as she entered. “No,” replied Lajo blandly.
The old woman sighed and flopped down on the charpoy, “Be a good girl and
throw apalmful of lentils and chick-peas in the cauldron; I am fagged out.”
Lajo rose with alacrity; she went about the task like one doing a final chore.
She cleaned the lentils and rice and put them in a small can. She threw a
handful of twigs into the hearth and lit a fire. It was usual for the old woman
to knead the flour herself; that evening Lajo put the flour through the sieve
and kneaded and baked the chapattis.
The day seemed as long as a year. At last the shadow of the wall lengthened
across the courtyard and the afternoon turned into evening. The old woman’s
son came home and Lajo did not turn up her nose at him as she had done in
the past.
Three times the ladle with which Lajo was stirring the lentils and rice slipped
from her hand; twice the rolling-in escaped her grip; then the copper drinking
bowl crashed to the floor. “What’s wrong with you?” shouted the old woman
dourly.
“Can’t you see what you’re doing, or are your eyes made of buttons?” added
the son gruffly.
The old woman’s temper did not upset Lajo, and her ears were dear to the
man’s taunts. She was animated with a courage she had never known. Her
mind was fixed on the moment which was fast approaching, it would be dark;
everyone would be asleep; and she would slip out of the house as smoothly as
a well-oiled wrist slips out of a bracelet.
Lajo hated touching the bottle of liquor and had always grumbled when the
man ordered her to fetch it for him. That evening she got it without waiting to
be asked. And she picked up his favourite double distilled brandy, flavoured
with cardamom, which he kept apart from the other bottles.
The old woman and her son were pleasantly surprised; she had fetched the
liquor on her own and the lentils and rice were delicious. Perhaps she was
coming round at last; perhaps she would share his bed that night.
The old woman began to nod with sleep.
“It’s become chilly in the courtyard. I have put your charpoy indoors. Go to
bed if you are tired.” Lajo spoke like the mistress of the house. The old
woman’s eyes opened wide for a moment. Obviously, the girl wanted to be
left alone with her son! She went indoors to sleep.
The night advanced. The man was soon drunk. He grabbed Lajo’s arm and
drew her to his Charpoy. Lajo did not resist.
Thus passed the first quarter of the night. Then liquor and sex took their toll.
The man fell into a deep sleep and began to snore lustily. Only the walls,
which had already seen so much, watched the mistress of the house slip out
across the threshold in the silence of midnight.
Lajo had gone no more than a few steps when she felt she was being
followed. She imagined invisible hands gripping her by the shoulders and
choking her. Even in the cold, which gave her goose flesh, she began to sweat
profusely.
She passed by the thick wall of her home into the dark, deserted lane. She
turned off the lane and took the curving path which ran behind the mud huts.

Lajo came out of the village. Between her and the wall was an open area. A
cold shiver rose from her bare feet up her spine to her forehead and spread
through her body. She glanced back and saw the mud huts sprawling like
tombs in the graveyard. She heard no shriek nor saw any phantom rise, but
she could hear her own breath like a goldsmith’s bellows. She had no time to
waste. She looked up briefly at the twinkling stars and stepped into the dark
void. She walked on with grim determination and looked back only after she
had crossed to the other side. No one followed her; behind her was the starlit
void. She turned to the well. There was no one there. She walked round the
parapet. She resolved in her mind that if Rashida did not come for her, she
would jump into it.
A figure draped in a grey sheet emerged from a cluster of bushes. “Sister, are
you Lajo?” The man uncovered his face as he spoke.
“Brother, prove your identity.” Lajo looked Rashida full in the eyes. He
seemed a kind man. She felt assured. Rashida held out the ring for Lajo to
see.
“I will get you to your destinatiuon to come back for Hamida tomorrow or the
day after; the children are with her.” He went back to the bushes and
untethered his mare.
“Ya Allah!” muttered Rashida, as he helped Lajo on to the back of the mare.
He mounted the saddle and dug his heels into the animal’s flanks. It broke
into a fast gallop. Rashida could not help recalling the time he had picked up
Pooro from the dusty track. He was no longer as he had been then, but he still
had strength in his arms. He remembered that when he had abducted Pooro,
his conscience had weighed like a stone, which had become heavier and
heavier. It had weighed on his mind for long. That night as the mare sped
through the starlit countryside, the weight seemed to lift and he felt as light as
a flower speeding in the fragrant breeze.
Before dawn, the news of Lajo’s disappearance spread through the village; the
women had not finished churning the buttermilk when they heard that the girl
had vanished. There were no Hindus left in the neighbourhood; no Hindu
could have taken her away. It could only be the deed of a Muslim. But why
should a Muslim have done such a thing, they asked each other in
bewilderment.
The sun rose. The smell of lentils cooking over cowdung fires, mixed with the
smoke of dry camel-thorn burning in clay ovens, spread from every house and
enveloped the whole village.
The door of Lajo’s home was wide open, like the jaws of a monster. Hamida
stepped inside. The courtyard was littered with unwashed utensils, caked with
flies. It was obvious that no food had been cooked in the house that morning.
“Have you seen that ill-starred wretch anywhere?” the old woman’s face was
wrinkled like crumpled parchment.
“Whom, Amma?” asked Hamida, dumping her bundle of khes on the ground.
“That witch – may Allah punish her!” The old woman’s face was puckered
with hatred.
“Hai, Hai!” exclaimed Hamida, clasping her hands. “Where is your daughter-
in-law?”
“Vanished! May she burn in hell!”
“Hai, hai! With whom? I’ve got a charm for her.”
“Throw it in the hearth. She’s been taken away by a ghost or a jinn.”
“Don’t fret, Amma. Who could have taken her away from the village? She
must be somewhere in the fields.” “Rubbish! How could she be in the fields
so late? It’s almost noon.”
“But Amma, She’s not a morsel of bread which a crow could swallow!”
“That’s what I’ve been saying. She might have jumped into a well, or
drowned herself in a pond. I did not trust her from the first day. But the boy
was so keen on her. He gave her too much freedom. He said she had no one to
go to.”
“Amma, where are her parents?”
“Ruin upon her parents! I warned him on the very first day that you can’t
build a happy home with stolen bricks. But who will listen to an old woman!
He had lost his heart to the girl. And what’s the point of keeping it a secret
from you when everyone in the village knows – she was a Hindu girl. When
the Hindus began to flee the village, my son abducted her. Allah is my
witness, I said that very day, ‘We should respect other people’s daughters and
sisters.’ That is exactly what I said to him. ‘My dear, most precious son,
you’ve brought a load of sin into the house. How will we ever unburden our
conscience of this crime?”
“Now I understand why she always looked so scared! But where could she
run away to? As they say, what escapes the crows falls to the kites. My own
feeling is that she’s fallen into some well or ditch. Either she’s killed herself
or her time had come.”
“At least the blot of shame has been wiped away. Only that sonof mine has
been at me ever since.he says, ‘Were you blind that you couldn’t see her go?
She wasnot a tiny sparrow’s leg anyone could put in his pocket and walk off
with!”
“Amma, did she ever go out by herself?”
“On her first coming I used to lock the outer door whenever I went out to give
my son his meal. Then lad said, ‘Where can the poor girl go to? If we keep
guard over her for twenty-four hours she will never get to like our home.’ She
was left to herself for a short hour or two in the afternoon. Even yesterday,
when I came back from the field, she seemed quite contented. I don’t know
what time calamity came and whisker her away”
“Have you had the wells dredged? She wasn’t the sort who would go away
with another. Have you looked into people’s homes?
“Since the morning, the villagers have been pouring in. they have scoured
every inch of the land round about. now my son, Allah Ditta, and some of his
companions are looking in the well.s if they find her corpse, the boy will at
least stop worrying about where she is. May Allah give my son long life!
There is no dearth of women …”
Hamida put on a grave face and sighed as the occasion demanded.
A group of men came into the courtyard. “We’ve dredged all the wells
without finding any trace of the girl,” they said as they sat down on the
charpoys.
“May all the sins be on her! Why do you look so sick?” Hamida realized why
Lajo’s face had worn the look of melancholy. Anyone caught in the talons of a
kite as ugly as this would soon be reduced to a sparrow’s skeleton.
“Amma, may Allah give you peace of mind! I must be going now,” said
Hamida, putting her bundleson her head.
“And who may you be?” asked Allah Ditta gruffly. The bundle of khes made
him suspicious.
“Who can she be but a khes seller?” replied the old woman.
“I’ve not seen you in the village before,” said Allah Ditta, in a tone full of
suspicion.
“She’s been coming round for the last many days,” snapped the old woman.
“Where are you from?” continued Allah Ditta in the same aggressive tone.
“I have two sons; I go from village to village and scrape a living.” She wished
she could grow wings and fly away.
“Are you Hindu or Muslim?” Allah Ditta was as suspicious as ever. His
companions began to smile.
“What have you in mind?” asked one of them, prodding Allah Ditta in the
ribs. “You want to take her into your house?”
“Fie brother! I am Hindu!” she drew her slipper towards her with her foot and
put her bundle on herhead.
“A Hindu doesn’t have his name tattooed on his forehead, does he” growled
Allah Ditta.
“Brother, will nothing clear your mind of suspicion? Look, my name is
Hamida,” she said, drawing back the sleeve of her left arm and showing the
tattooed letters.
“Go in peace, woman! He is not himself today,” cried the old woman from a
distance.
“If I find any clues, I’ll come over myself to tell you, Amma.” Hamida went
out as fast as her legs would carry her.
Rashida hired an ekka for the return journey and brought his family from
Rattoval to Sakkar.
Lajo was waiting, her eyes intently on the door. As soon as she heard the
sound of approaching feet, she rushed up and undid the latch. The family
came in and bolted the door from inside. They huddled together like a
terrified herd of deer in a jungle cave.
By the time they had finished their meal, it was fairly late. Rashida realized
that the women wanted to be left to themselves to have a heart-to-heart
conversation and removed his charpoy to another room.
The boys were put to bed. The women laid their charpoys alongside each
other.
“The refugee convoy from Rattoval passed through this village,” said
Hamida, opening the conversation.
“Did you see them?” asked Lajo. She did not know how or why Hamida had
rescued her.
“I met your brother; that’s how I heard about you.”
“How did you recognize him? You had never seen hum.”
“I had seen him once before,” replied Hamida. She told Lajo of her meeting
Ram Chand in the fields. She also told her how till the second meeting she
had not known of Ram Chand’s marriage to her younger sister. “I had not
heard till the day the convoy passed through.” After a long sigh,she
continued, “People raise monuments to the dead; they have funeral feasts and
make gifts in charity. Does any one so much as mention my name in my
home?”
Lajo told how, when Hamida’s father had died the year before, her mother had
often named her in her lamentations.
“My poor mother! She first lost a daughter and then her daughter-in-law!”
The women broke down and cried.
“When you get back, ask my mother to see me at least once before I die,”
sobbed Hamida.
“I… I’ll never get there.”
“Oh yes, you will. You will go back to your home, your husband and your
brother.”
“I am no good for anyone now. No one will accept me.”
“Lajo, I will never allow such wickedness while I live. You will certainly go
back to your home. You were not to blame for what happened to you.”
“What wrong had you done that no one in your family has acknowledged you
to this day?” asked Lajo.
“That’s true. But then I was the only one. My parents did not have the courage
to face the taunts of their neighbours and relations. They had to stifle their
instincts. Now, it’s not just one or two, but hundreds of thousands that have
been taken away from their kindred.”
“No, Pooro this was my kismet, otherwise I would not have been put to such
shame. No one will ever come to fetch me.”
“Oh yes, they will.” Hamida assured her. “When my brother writes, we will
send him information about you. What does my brother look like now?”
The question brought her husband’s image before Lajo’s mind. How would
she face him? What would the other members of the family say to her? She
was convinced that no one would ever come for her. It was an imaginary
spread from which she could eat her fill. “Lajo, someone is bound to come for
you,” repeated Hamida. “Today no one can taunt another. People are taking
back their daughters and sisters. Rashida tells me that men are crossing into
India to find their wives and are bringing them back. Some have even had
children born to them.” Lajo did not know why she had not conceived. It was
a mercy, otherwise she would have been in a worse plight than at present. “So
far our families have been mourning the loss of one, now they can mourn the
death of two. Pooro, I have nowhere to go. What face will I show to anyone? I
will look after your children and you can feed me.”
“Don’t talk like that and sprinkle salt on my wounds. This is your own home.
But they are bound to come for you. I will get all the world to plead with
them and persuade them.” She embraced Lajo.
“How are you faring?” asked Lajo.
“Rashida certainly committed a crime in abducting me. But since then, he has
been good to me. If he had not helped me, how could I have found you and
brought you away?”
“He put his life in dire peril, if that monster finds out,he willbreak every one
in my body and then burn my corpse.”
“They don’t burn their dead, they bury them.”
“Pooro, don’t you fear he’ll find out and come for me? I may bring
misfortune on your happy family.” “
They have no clue; not even a trace of your shadow.” Hamida mentioned her
visit to the old woman and her son after Lajo’s disappearance. “I hid a Hindu
girl in this very back room and no one knew anything about her. I left her with
a refugee convoy. We’ll keep you in hiding here without telling anyone in the
village. As soon as we get a letter from India, we’lll quietly take you to
Lahore. No one will be any the wiser.”
“What happens if no one writes for me.”
“My heart tell me your brother will not fail you.”
The days went by; the sun rose and set with monotonous regularity, but
nothing changed the tenor of Lajo’s life. No one got to know where she was,
nor did she receive any news of her family. her only companion was Hamida.
They talked late into the night, till they were heavy with sleep. Then their
sleep was full of dreams. They woke in the early hours and resumed their
stories; they told each other of their dreams and what they meant. Sometimes
their spirits were low and at others, with as little reason, full of hope.
Hamida looked after Lajo as if she was an honoured guest, someone who had
been entrusted to her for safe keeping for a few days and would then leave her
for ever. She saw in Lajo’s face the faces of all the members of the family
from which she had been torn away. She knew that none of them would ever
come to her. Lajo was her first and last guest.

Winter gave way to spring. The water lost its chill. One afternoon Rashida
came in and as soon as he saw Lajo and Hamida his eyes brimmed with tears.
The two women rose and went to his side. For a long while not a word came
from Rashida’s lips. Lajo’s heart sank as she thought that the one thing she
feared most had come to pass – the old woman and her son had got to know
of her whereabouts and would drag her away by force. What would they do to
Hamida and her family?
Rashida subsided on the charpoy and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. He
patted Lajo affectionately on the back, as an old father would pat his daughter
when sending her off to her husband. “Ram Chand has come over today,” he
said.
“Here?” the two women asked with one voice.
“Yes – with a posse of Indian and Pakistani police. I had a word with him
when we were by ourselves.”
“Have they really come for me?” asked Lajo excitedly; then she felt a little
abashed.
“Foolish one! What else would bring them here?” replied Rashida.
Hamida did not say anything, but she felt pleased that her faith in Ram Chand
had been justified. Lajo would lose heart and at times even Rashida would
despair, only Hamida had never given up hope.
“Is he by himself?” asked Lajo.
Rashida understood what she really wanted to know. “Yes, he’s come alone.
But don’t fear – all your relatives will welcome you.”
Lajo felt somewhat reassured.
“I’ve explained to him that if we handed you over here, everyone in the
village would get to know. And quite possibly the news might get to Rattoval.
I told them to return to Lahore and wait for me to bring Lajo to them.”
“You’ve done well,” said Hamida.
“We have to be in Lahore five days hence. By then Hamida’s brother will
have come from Amritsar. I thought it would be a good idea if Hamida also
meets her brother.” Rashida put a gentle hand on Lajo’s back.
Hamida began to cry. Lajo put her head in Hamida’s lap and clasped her
round the wait. They shared their sorrows and tears.

Next morning Hamida sent for some gram flour. She made candy with sliced
coconut, dried fruit and the butter she had been saving. She made Lajo a new
outfit of pure silk, as if the girl were her own daughter returning to her
husband’s home.
On the third day they left the village while it was still dark and caught the
train for Lahore.
They met police constables mounting guard about them. Lajo could not raise
her eyes to her husband’s. Hamida met her brother, knowing that this was to
be at the same time their first and their last meeting; that an hour of reunion
would be followed by a final separation. They felt helpless before the
inexorable writ of fate. They had nothing to say to each other. All they could
do was to cry like children and wipe their tears away with the backs of their
hands.
“I beseech you, never, never let the slightest slur be cast on Lajo.” Hamida
was the first to speak.
Lajo’s husband looked down shamefacedly: Ram Chand also kept his gaze
fixed on the ground. After a while Ram Chand answered: “Pooro, do not
shame us in this way.”
Lajo’s husband could not bring himself to say anything – nor perhaps had he
paid attention to what they were saying. “He was not only meeting the wife he
had lost, he was also meeting a sister he had lost before he was old enough to
remember. All these years a fire of hate had smouldered within him. He had
used a spark from that fire to consume Rashida’s harvest and reduced it to
ashes. And now the same long-lost sister was there, sitting in front of him. He
overlooked the fact that Rashida had rescued his wife, Lajo; his mind only
dwelt on the fact that Rashida had abducted his sister. The police van was
ready. An Indian constable shouted: “All Hindus going over to India, come
this side! The bus is ready!”
Ram Chand embraced Rashida and repeated over and over again: “Brother,
you have been very good to us; I’ll never forget the obligation I owe you.”
Rashida’s face reflected both pride and humility – the first because of the
good turn he had done to Lajo, the second because of his having abducted
Pooro. He felt that he had partly redeemed the debt of honour he owed on that
score. Another voice shouted: “Hindus bound for India, this side!”

Hamida put the silk clothes and the candy in Lajo’s hands, embraced her
warmly many times, then suddenly clasped her brother to her bosom.
“Pooro!” said her brother, grabbing her by the arm. “This is your only chance
…” Hamida understood what he was saying and for a brief moment was
overcome by temptation. She knew she had only to say that she was a Hindu
and they would put her in the bus and take her back to her people. Like Lajo,
like thousands of other women in the country, she too could … But she made
her brother release her arm, turned back to where Rashida was standing and
clasped her son to her bosom.
“When Lajo is welcomed back in her home, then you can take it that Pooro
has also returned to you. My home is now in Pakistan.” She said to her
brother.
“Whether one is a Hindu girl or a Muslim one, whosoever reaches her
destination, she carries along my soul also,” Pooro said to herself and made a
last vow by closing eyes.
The bus started on its journey, leaving the deserted road in clouds of dust.

OceanofPDF.com
 That Man

Woman is the world’s greatest smuggler. A man might smuggle out opium
and marijuana. Or at best gold. Or the secrets of a government. That’s all.
Nothing further. But a woman can smuggle a man’s complete existence. So
long as she can, she smuggles and conceals it deep down in her womb. When
she cannot, she confesses she cannot and shows she cannot. And that too not
out of a sense of shame. With intense pride. Why, she may archly consider the
art of smuggling to be her profession. Not as a mere right. She is after all
obliged to perpetuate the human race.
So, to oblige my father, my mother asked God to grant her a son. At first she
went to the local medicos, then to faqirs for herbal remedies; then to the
women around for voodoo and taboo; even to the graves of saints who still
had the power to perform miracles; thereon to the temple dedicated to Shiva –
the Lord of Procreation. So frantic was she in fact that she drove God to
desperation until He granted her the wish.
And taking him to be really miserly, she had her own way of going to the
extent of striking a bargain even with Him. should He give her a son, she
would offer the fruit of her womb at the altar of the same temple; to serve
Him and His great cause.
A strange bargain. So God had to be under an obligation to her. “See what I
am offering to serve You. People bring a handful of flour; or offer molasses,
rice and coconuts; or at the utmost dedicate a slab of marble at the threshold
of or on the templewall; or a gold-plated leaf in the pagoda. But see, I have
offered a live boy to render such service as You will have him to!”
And on the other hand, she put my father too under another sort of obligation
to her. “See, what ordeals I had to pass through. But finally I managed to
perpetuate your name, I did not allow your seed to die out. And even if this
son of yours will no till your soil, and will not be a prop to you in your old
age, you will still have the pleasure of feasting your eyes on him and find in
him some solace. Worldly sons can only be seen, but people will travel
distances to pay their homage to a child offering.”
So mother often comes to pay her homage; father comes only on a full-moon
night or on a feast-day. Perhaps for the simple reason that mother had to go
through so much and to reckon with a happening of such significance. Here I
am then – at twenty, a manifestation of that long struggle of hers.
I do not remember it all. Forty days after my birth when she wrapped me in a
saffron cloth and presented me as her offering. I wonder whether I cried at the
touch of Lord Shiva’s cold feet beneath my tender body. I have it that mother
did enrobe me in saffron from the very first.
The Chief Priest of the temple, Mahant Kirpa Sagar, touched my forehead
with the feet of the idol and put me again into her lap. “This child is
henceforth Shiva’s son; Parvati is his mother and you simply his wet-nurse.
For one year you are to render this service as wet-nurse. When the year is
over, you are bidden to return him to us.”
So for one year I was given as a debt. I do not know whether I learnt to call
mother by any name during this one year or not. Perhaps I did not since my
lips do not seem to be familiar with any name for her.
I imagine I must have crawled on my first birthday in my saffron wraps to the
flowers at the feet of the idol in the temple and picked up one and put it in my
mouth. Not accepting the taste, I must as certainly have cried. The old
serving-man of the temple, Sai Mangat Ram, tells me that petals of the
flowers had stuck to my palate when I found lying gasping for breath. He
pincered the petals out of my mouth with his fingers, and then to pacify me,
Mahant had with his own hands put some milk in a vessel, added some sugar
to it and made me partake of the offering at the idol.
Perhaps I looked for days with the eye of wonder at the faces of people
around; at Sai Mangat Ram’s, at Gobind Sadhu’s, at Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s, at
Shiva’s and Parvati’s, and at the faces of devotees visiting the temple each
day. I remember nothing. Only all the faces seem familiar from the very
beginning of my life.
There is a cave in the temple. They say the mouth of the passage to this is in
Kangra valley, and that it stretches right up to the peak of Mount Kailash. But
no one has ever traveled all the way through this maze of a cave. Or if ever
anyone did it must have been ages ago. It runs into hundreds of miles. But this
is mere hearsay. One sees only this end of this story; beginning at the mouth-
end of the cave; no one knows anything about the other end. I know I will
never know either, but it seems as if I travel part of this interminable way,
some few miles every day. I do not seem to arrive anywhere. I simply go on
and on. It is dark at its rounded mouth; the dark deepens as you go deep
inside.
The word ‘Mother’ I have recourse to, mind you, only to tell my tale; I have
no relationship with it. Hundreds of women come to the temple, she too is
one. Sentimental attachment I could have had only with ‘that woman’. And
yet I would refer to her as ‘that woman’, not as ‘Mother’. The word seems to
me a cruel joke – in it’s relationship to me for certain, perhaps equally to her.
Her’s is exactly the case of poor Parvati.
So often at night I wander away from that part of the temple where we sleep
to the place where the life-size statues of Shiva and Parvati are. To me they
both appear to be the forms of an aged peasant and a middle-aged woman
wrapt in fervent prayer – for the gift of a son – exactly as once my father and
mother must have fervently prayed to God for granting them their boon.
I stand in front of the two temple statues and smilingly ask: “Do you want a
son? You do, do you? Right then, I offer myself in charity to you.”
The statues appear to be two beggars; and I, the alms offered.
No – not even the object offered as alms; I am only the beggar’s bowl. Some
colour, taste, smell must go with the object; and more than anything – satiety.
I have nothing of all that in me. I am merely a vessel. To carry things in. the
contents are the contentment that must come to the man whom I refer to as
‘Father’; or to the woman, I refer to as ‘Mother’; or to Shiva or Parvati who
have spread the fame of their grace far and wide, as sons are granted to them
who come with such yearnings to their temple-doors.
I think Mahant Kirpa Sagar is really a far-sighted person, for at my birth he
calculated the state of mind that in my maturer years I was to attain.
Consequently on a full moon night he christened me – Kirpa Pattar, meaning
thereby, one who deserves kindness.
Kirpa Pattar or Bhikya Pattar – that is one who depends on alms – would
mean the same to me anyway.
In a way are not all of us raised on alms? Not I alone. Sai Mangat Ram too.
And Gobind Sadhu. And Mahant Kirpa Sagar no less. No one has actually to
hold out palms for alms; yet do not all ask standing on their feet? Sometimes
on the strength of their own feet, at other times on the strength of these much
stronger – as Shiva and Parvati’s. Whatever devotees have to give, they place
at the feet of Shiva and Parvati. Some at Mahant’s feet too; a few at Gobind
Sadhu’s and few and far between at Mangat Ram’s. my feet only get added to
theirs. We all, as it were, get the work of our hands out of our feet.
But the thought of Bhikya Pattar comes to me alone. I cannot say why. Shiva
and Parvati, of course stand speechless; from Mahanat I have heard nothing of
the sort; Gobind Sadhu is otherwise dumb, the question of his giving any
voice to his feelings does not obviously arise. But I have not been able to
elicit from the expression of his face either that he takes anything as alms. On
the contrary, if he does not get his share of the precious almond sherbet, he
looks hard at everyone; Sai Mangat Ram by nature is unconcerned, should
you give him bread of the coarsest grain, he would eat it as if it were a
coconut delicacy. Only something gets stuck in my throat. With every morsel
I feel the constriction.
Our order has only four small shelters; one for Mahant; one for me; one for
Gobind Sadhu and Mangat Ram to share; and one for guest sadhus or faqirs.
The mopping and sweeping of all of these is, however, Mangat Ram’s job.
The temple is aloof-away from these. You go up the hillside, along a pebbly
path to it. A streamlet flows at the foot of the temple. The cleanliness of the
platform upto a point of this waterway is also Mangat Ram’s responsibility
(Gobind Sadhu’s originally). The floor and general cleanliness of the temple
is mine. Before I arrived on the scene, Mahant had assigned that chore to
himself. Apparently, by being associated with such types of tasks we wash
and scrub the very word “alms” clean off ourselves. But everyone, I mean
each one of us – except me.
The temple is not built of bricks and stone, it has been carved out of a massive
rock. The upper part of the rock is like a roof; the lower, like a floor. The
statues too have not been brought from elsewhere and consecrated here; they
have been finely chiseled out of the centre piece of the rock into the forms
they bear. And the streamlet flowing by springs from the back of the hill in
such a way that some of its water seeps in and drop by drop keeps falling on
them. So they are, always being washed clean. Butwith the constant drip-
drop-drip, a rather slippery layer of moss-like growth settles on them. That
entails the daily exercise of rubbing with a thick, coarse material. Were I to
rub off with any coarse thought the word ‘alms’ too that keeps falling, drop by
drop, night and day, on my back – it would still have a slippery moss-like
layer settled on me. Everyday, in fact, it seems to grow on me.
I have no basic grouse against Mahant Kirpa Sagar. He has raised me, tutored
and taught me from the ‘earnings’ of the alms I have brought to him. if I have
any, it is because he is ‘sagar’; that is, an ‘ocean’; and I, because I am ‘pattar’
– a mere vessel.
And it is no mere grouse I have; I have an intense loathing.
As intense a loathing do I have for the woman I name ‘Mother’; for the
woman that is, who gave birth to this ‘pattar’. This hatred has so
overwhelmed me that whenever she comes to the temple, I find some excuse
or other to slip away to some part or other of the surrounding area. Should she
even then happen to be in my way, she undoes the knot in her veil to take out
the shelled walnuts she stuffs into my mouth. But the moment she turns her
back, I spit out the mouthful. And any man called ‘father’ by me stands as
sentinel for the glory of his race.
Kirpa Sagar’s bulging, red cheeks to me appear to be two rankling sores
waiting to be brought to ahead with poultices.
When Mother treads in softly, almost on her toes, she strikes me as a cat about
to pounce on the throat of a rat to strangle him.
Lean and lanky father feebly goes about resting his head on his shoulders like
a scarecrow in the centre of a field. And I get scared out of my wits like a
sparrow or crow.
This is not a normal view with a normal vision. I know I have red streaks of
hatred in the balls of my eyes.
But when Gobind Sadhu pounds and grinds hemp and drinks it, he too gets
red streaks in the balls of his eyes. And when he looks at me with those red-
streaked eyes of his, do I, I wonder, appear to him as a twenty-year old young
man or as a woman of that age?
One day, three or four years ago, Gobind Sadhu sat massaging his
snakegourd-like legs with almond oil when suddenly he stopped and gripped
my arm, and then instead began massaging my back and legs with the same
almond oil. I detest cats, dogs – all animals. In fact, His long bony hands were
like dog’s paws on me. And when I tried to wrench myself free, he threw the
entire weight of his body on me, flung me flat on my back on a slab undid his
loin-cloth. I shrieked with all my strength – with all the strength – I had in me
– Mahant Kirpa Sagar came running on hearing my cries. He lifted the pestle
lying there and belaboured Gobind Sadhu as if he had decided to pound him
with it to a paste. Since then Gobind Sadhu has not been on speaking terms
with me. So much so that should I be reading under a tree, he would make a
detour to find another place to settle on. But I can tell even now that
whenever he gets drunk on his hemp and the red streaks come to his eyes, he
slantingly glances at me going up and down as if I were a twenty-year old
young woman to him.
But I do not hate him since he strikes me as a mangy cur. One can sidle away
from a cur; one can develop a feeling of revulsion for a cur; but revulsion
does not amount to hatred.
Similarly, Sai Mangat Ram, who seems to me a castrated bull from whom no
cow need fear any danger, I do not hate or fear at all.
The characters I really hate are those who seem to go about with their
offerings; or else, with a beggar’s bowl-like myself.

Hatred, hatred, hatred …

A flight of birds has just flown by. Perhaps Sai Mangat Ram had spread rice
and lentils on the patch of ground near the wall across. The sparrows had
mistaken the grains for bird-seed and Sai or Gobind Sadhu had rung the pestle
bells and frightened them away. Some sort of sound was heard. And then it
was that the flight fluttered back over my head as if cheeping in choleric
chorus, ‘hatred’, ‘hatred’, ‘hatred’!
This perhaps is too big a world. Too big to fit into sparrow beaks. But they
kept repeating it – as much of it as they could anyway get at with their tiny
beaks.
The sound of Pestle Nath’s pestle is being heard from day before yesterday in
our habitation. This Sadhu generally comes once or twice a year. and during
the period of his stay organizes regular hempen orgies. I was very small when
he used to sit me in his lap – no – he did not sit me – he literally would
squeeze me into his lap and ask: “Do you know the dynasty of the Nath
Yogis? Now, if you counted all their names without a stutter, I’d give you
cardamoms and candy.”
Not out of temptation for cardamoms and candy, but eager to be released from
his strangle-hold, I would quickly rattle off all the nine names: Adi Nath,
Machandra Nath, uday Nath, Santokh Nath, Kanthar Nath, Satya Nath,
Achamb Nath, Chowrangi Nath and Gorakh Nath. And when he would just
about be taking out the promised stuff from a knot at the en do this wrap, I
would spring away and shriek: “And your name – Pestle Nath!” I knew his
name was ‘Sheel Baba’. But because he always went about with the pestle in
his hand, I called him ‘Pestle Nath’. “Off with you”, he would shout at me
and start knotting up tightly the cardamoms and candy lumps. Suddenly then
he would lurch forward to fold me up into his being again. But within that
brief moment, I would manage to dash away.
I do not know exactly why but today it seems that he will again push me into
his lap and ask me the names of the Yogis. After I have gone through with my
drill, I have a mind to say: “And your name I don’t know, but nine I know is
Beggar Nath.” What greater joke can I have at my own expense than that?
Sidh makkar dhwaj is a herbal medicine only a yogi can compound. And of
yogis, Sheel Baba alone knows the prescription. Last year he made some for
Mahant. After taking it, he had no arthritic pain the whole year through. So
now, he is to make some more. And at Mahant’s request, he was imparted the
secret to me: “eight grammes gold, two lbs mercury, four lbs refined sulphur.
The three ingredients must be ground with the juice of red cottonwool flowers
and the pulp of gheekwar beans. This mixture must be put in a solar glass
container with the lid bound all round at the rim with hard earth paste; seven
layers of cloth – each with a coat of fuller’s earth, must be dried and wrapped
around the container and then set straight in an earthen pot – packed tightly
on all sides with fine sand. Finally, this must be kept on a slow, steady, cow-
dung fire for four days and nights. The reddish dust that should settle
thereafter on the mouth of the container would be the poor makkar dhwaj.”
Dictating this prescription to me, Sheel Baba tweaked my ears and warned:
“And don’t you like a quack go about administering half-baked stuff to
anyone! If the mercury is not well cooked, even the bones of the patient will
start crumbling and melting.”
I refrained from speaking my mind but I nearly spat on him: “Sheel Baba,
‘bhikya’ too is like uncooked mercury. The bones of one who lives on alms
can melt too.”
Mercury is mythologically associated with Shiva. What with alms? Mother?
And why indeed not?
That Mother of mine came again today. Stealthily she trod right upto my
shanty. Whenever she sneaks in like that, she reminds me of a cat. That is
what I thought the whole of yesterday. Throughout the day there was such
commotion over our entire habitation – simply to catch a stray cat. A platter
of milk had been kept at the mouth of one of the shanties so that when she
was just about to lap it up, Sai Mangat Ram – who had taken a position
behind the door, promptly banged the door shut. The creature was trapped.
But when an attempt was made to catch her by coming through the
communicating door of the adjacent shanty, she sprang up against the window
with such alacrity and force that the rusty bolt gave way and she leapt straight
out. But since, three sadhus of the order were after her, by twilight they had
caught her. And today, on finally killing her, one of her bones is being made
into a paste with a mixture of the three myrobalans in equal parts. A few days
ago, Gobind Sadhu contracted a sore. Sheel Baba says it is a running sore and
for this, the sure cure they say is an application of cat’s bonemeal paste.
The whole of last night I dreamt I kept chasing a cat, even though the
previous day I had joined the party; but in the dream I went after one, up and
down the rocky terrain. The strange thing was that the object running ahead of
me was sometimes a cat and sometimes transformed into my mother…
I do not know what a running sore is, how pus keeps oozing out of it or why
spasms of pain, shoot off from it, but there is a pain in my bones – in each one
of my bones; in each one of my joints; in each one of my thoughts…
And a dreadful thought flashes across – if I applied the ointment to anyone of
my mother’s ribs or bones, or to the running sore in my mind…
According to Manu, the ancient law-giver, there are twenty-one hellpits;
according to Brahma Vyavartha, eighty-six; whatever the number – one of
these must include my present mental state.

Gobind Sadhu has indeed been cured by Sheel Baba’s medication. The bells
of his pestle are again ringing merrily today, grinding hemp in his mortar of
stone. He sits pounding away like mad, his dumbman’s lingo ringing in to
keep time with the pestle-bells: “Go on grinding gladly! Go on grinding
madly!” This incantation taught him by Sai Mangat Ram bears his dumb
man’s phonetics “gai – gai – gai” as overtones.
I cannot say whether this grip on me is due to cold or the smell of hemp. I am
suddenly seized with a shiver. But I suffer from frequent shivering fits, even
when I am in the sun tucked up in my quilt.
I was very small when one day, a class fellow, Roolia, took me straight from
school to his house. Now I was the one to be respected. That was why his
mother drew out a rush-stool and spread a prayer-rug on it for me to sit on.
So, as one different from everyone else around on the floor, here was I raised
high!
She did not draw a rush-stool out for Roolia,; on the contrary, as she kept
scolding, she continued pulling him by the arm towards herself. “Silly, why
have you smudged your face with ink?” Then with a corner of her veil, she
rubbed his face. The ink would not come off with the dry end, so she wet it on
her tongue and again rubbed the patchy part of the face clean.
Roolia wrenched his arm free. Dumping the schoolbag somewhere, he was in
too great a hurry to accompany me. But his mother got angry again,” Where
are you off to – hungry and thirsty? Sit down as you ought to – you devil’s
offspring!” In the same breath, she was sweet and said, “You don’t send away
a visitor you bring with you hungry, you witless mite!” I’ll make hot
chapattis; you can eat some yourself and make your friend eat some too.” And
tendering this advice to Roolia, she planted a kiss on his brow.
Not as a woman though, as a scold kisses a brow, she smacked a kiss on his.
The smoke from the smouldering wood-fire of the brazier was filling the
courtyard. When Roolia flung his satchel off, a book fell far out and his little
brother sleeping nearby on a low cot suddenly burst out crying. Perhaps the
flies on his face buzzed too fiercely. Roolia’s mother fanned the brazier with
one hand, picked up the book with the other from the floor, pressed her lips
on it, touched her forehead with it, and put it back into the bag. That hand
free, she waived the flies off the child’s face. If lord Shiva had a set of three
eyes, she surely had as many hands.
It was a dirty, dingy house. But from the crackling of woodfire, from the
buzzing of flies, from the scoldings administered to Roolia – then from the
spittle-cleansing process of Roolia’s face – some sort of a warmth wafted
across to me : a snugness …
I have never been to Roolia’s place again. But sometimes, sitting or asleep, a
shivering-fit seized me. I cannot say why, but that incident from my boyhood
days comes to my mind.

Last night we celebrated Lord Shiva’s birth anniversary. Mother perhaps was
fasting. She had called Kirpa Sagar for ‘puja’. I hear she had entreated him to
bring me along as well – positively at prayer time…
To skip this very hour, I lost myself in the part of the forest at the back of the
temple – so that if they tried to search for me, the time for ‘puja’ would
anyway fly by. I learnt afterwards that she wept through the ‘puja’.
Today Sai Mangat Ram repeated her comment; “Instead of warm blood, this
boy has cold water in his veins.”
I was highly amused hearing this. I suppose she said quite the right thing. In
Padama Purana there is a parable that when Mankan Rishi went into solitude
for meditation, except for leaves, nothing could be had to eat. So for years he
lived on leaves. And instead of the usual red, his bloodstream became leaf-
green. When out of sheer arrogance, Mankan Rishi mentioned this happening
to Shiva, to teach him a lesson in humility, the Lord revealed to him that
instead of blood, his veins carried ashes. Now if Mankan Rishi could have
leaf-green in his blood-stream, and Shiva ashes, why could mine not have
cold water? After all, from birth till now, I have drunk only cold water from
the stream running at the foot of the temple.
I felt tickled again today. I do not know what exactly laughter is, but whatever
I experienced was perhaps just it.
I was standing beside Shiva’s statue. It was prayertime. The hand of whoever
crossed the threshold of the temple, clanged at least once, the heavy iron bell
overhead. The ringing of the bell clashed with the prayers being chanted. It
was a heavy sound, that is why it was whole. Only the verses of the prayers
got broken …
And lo and behold! Standing opposite me, I beheld my mother in front of the
statues, both hands folded in prayer. Slanting along the stone roof of the
temple, water trickled drop by drop on both the statues and devotees. So it fell
on her veiled head too. And she struck me as a well-soused dripping-wet cat.
But I was not tickled by the sight she was. What I could not help laughing at
was her henna-dyed hair. It was long afterwards that I thought of henna; it
then occurred to me that some days ago I had heard her consulting Sai
Mangat Ram on treatment for her headache as she stood pressing her temples
and Sai had prescribed applications of henna paste. But when I saw her
reddish hair, she seemed suddenly to have been transformed from a black-
and-white cat into a ginger coloured one.
The incantations mumbled by her also were to my ears as the mewing of a
cat.
I felt a shiver go down my spine. I was reminded of my childhood, when in
fact, I was too small for a shanty all to myself. I must have been about four, I
slept, as usual, on a mat beside Mahant Kirpa Sagar in his shelter – when,
waking up from my sleep, I suddenly shrieked out crying, seeing what I did
right in front of me…
Now that I look back, it must have been a life-size object. But at that time it
seemed to have spread all over inside – with a monstrously big black face,
flaming-red eyes and flashing-white eye-balls, and greenish feathers waving
from the head.
Although I remembered Mahant Kirpa Sagar having picked me up and
wrapped me in his rug, I also remember having gone on crying and shivering.
“Here just touch this, it will not harm you,” Mahant unwrapped me once and
tried to turn my head towards it – from fear of it really to set me free – but
instead I broke into cries of alarm again at it’s very sight.
In the light of the following day, on the expanse beneath the trees, Mahant put
me down and bade him sit as well, to coax me into taking to him with his
manner of introduction; “He is a Diwana Sadhu. Diwanas are very good men.
Haria Baba is his name.”
Long afterwards, I understood that certain Sadhus had established an order
known by the name “Diwana” and that all the Sadhus who belonged to it
blackened their faces and stuck peacock feathers in their hear.
But the weird vision of that night long remained engraved in my memory.
Something murky spread before my mind’s eye. And in the midst of that
darkness, a dazzling coloured peacock feather waved to and fro. I do not
know what connection the incident of today has with that one long past.
Seeing mother’s henna-dyed hair I was reminded of the peacock feather.
There appears a vast void. And in that murky blank, a tangled strand of
henna-dyed hair dangles in front of my eyes – like a peacock-feather.

One can be in doubt once – perhaps twice, but when something happens every
other day … frequently … can there be room for doubt – I wonder.
It was dawn, devotions-time I was standing inside the temple – pretty close to
the statues. That was why the flowers showered on them nearly spread out to
my feet too. But then, when Sunderan rained a whole veilful, my feet got
almost completely covered. And when she bowed low in obeisance to the
images. I felt one hand softly touch my feet.
A current passed through me. I lowered my eyes – towards my feet, but on
and around them were so many flowers that I could see neither my feet nor
her hand.
This could have been a matter of doubt. So I gave not a second thought to it.
But three or four days after this incident was the first day of the month.
Neither do so many devotees come to the temple every day, nor are quite as
many flowers showered. On the first day of the month, however, on a full-
moon night and on any such sacred occasion, the porch of the small temple is
heaped with flowers.
That day, for a second time, I imagined having gone through the same
experience. Sunderan rained a veilful of flowers on the feet of the statues, and
then bowing her head in reverence she stretched her arm out under and placed
the palm of one hand on a foot of mine.
With intense mental struggle, I persuaded myself into believing that I was
imagining things. But when I went through the same sensations on the
occasion of the full-moon celebrations, the on the first day of the last new
month, and again yesterday on the first day of this next new month … what
… then …?
She has never spoken a word to me. That was why some days ago – I
reasoned one time out to be a mere chance happening. But the time after, it
certainly could not be.
She once walked along the path through her fields towards the village. The
dust had become so dense that even if one stole a glance and then went on
intently, one could not have been caught in the act or even been recognized. I
kept to my way towards the stream that runs past her fields. She too turned in
the same direction. Going a little further I looked back – just towards the spot
where I could see she had reached the bank and halted. I heard a strain – so
sustained – as if measuring the length of the stream it seemed.
But my looking back a bit was guarded – just in case she suspected I had seen
her; or that her singing had made me stop. I stood behind a tree, a trifled
moved.
I could hear and see her. She sang on, far too rapt to sense another’s presence.
She kept dipping her hands in the aters of the stream, washing something.
Perhaps it was the vegetables she had picked from the fields. In the dark,
nothing much was distinguishable, except that she was too absorbed to look in
my direction or in any other. And what she sang was rather strange: the lines
were from the familiar romance – Pooran Bhagat – those very lines in fact, in
which her namesake is mentioned.
“I have erred: do you folks not fall in love with Yogis, Traversing forests
even, Sunderan culd not get to them – Yogis are friends to none – dear
folks…”
I stood rooted to the spot near the tree for a good while. I do not know why –
except that the effect of these lines on me was like a sprinkle of cold water. I
wrapped the saffron home-spun cloth I had on my shoulders tightly round
myself.
I saw her then turning, away from the stream – straight towards the same path
to the village. Her voice I suppose had accidentally fallen on my ears. She had
not deliberately sung to me.
By some trick of memory, one thing kept haunting me one day. Many years
ago when I was very small, the village women would insist on taking me to
their homes, turn by turn, from the temple on Virgin’s Day. “He is our
Exceptional Choice” they would say as they put me, a single boy, in the midst
of the little girls set in a row for worship.
Once it so happened, Sunderan’s mother performed the ceremony at her
house. That day Sunderan had a tinsel-bordered red veil covering her head.
Her hands too were a deep red. In fact, she kept showing off her reddened
palms to everyone. “See my dear, I’ve applied henna especially for this day.
Just see how red my palms are!” And Sunderan’s maternal aunt washed the
feet of all those girls and tied the holy thread round their wrists and placed
them in a row, and she made me sit by the side of Sunderan and then called
out to her mother: “Hey Sister! Come and see for yourself! Just look this side.
These two look like the Pooran-Sunderan pair of the romance, don’t they?
This young yogi really looks like a prince in disguise.”
Then having dished out pancakes and grams – the specialities for this
particular occasion – in tiny plates, all the women began laughing. I could not
in the least understand at that moment what tickled them. Nor could
Sunderan. But years later … when I read the romantic tale of Pooran Bhagat
… And then when once during the Dussehra festival, Sunderan came from her
village to take her cousin round the fair-ground and we found ourselves face
to face by sheer accident, pointing at me, she cried out to her,” Here comes
my Pooran … my Yogi …”
That happened long ago. But that day somehow the incident kept recurring,
reviving memories, when I saw her walking along the stream completely rapt,
particularly when I heard her singing – stretching the length of that line to the
length of the stream as it were – “I have erred, dear folks, do not any of you
fall in love with yogis …” I had reckoned this too as a strange coincidence.
But now when every day … when every other day … a hand from under the
flowers touches my foot …
The foot seems to get numb for a while.
As in the fairytale, a princess goes to pick flowers, and on touching the stem
of a certain flower, a snake entwined around it hisses on her finger and she
swoons and falls in the same flower-bed, so my foot too loses the power to
feel beneath the flowers.
Her arm under pretence of offering flowers, has, as a snake …

These days one of Mahant’s cheeks is swollen. Two of his molars are aching.
There is no change in his routine prayer programme – except for one slight
difference perhaps – the words of the shlokhas seem to be stuck in his mouth
like the molars; they move inside but do not fall out.
Sai Mangat Ram prepares semolina porridge twice a day for him. Mahant can
swallow that thick liquid only, nothing else. Before that he used to take
blanched almonds with honey every morning. He cannot chew nuts now. That
is why they are ground to a paste and put into the porridge. But as a routine
course, he sits me down beside him and gives me a bowl to eat when he has
his – just as he used to make me eat almonds and honey when he had some.
Only, I do not know why, the one word ‘generosity’ that I so sincerely want to
attach to his name, I somehow cannot.
When he goes to bed at night, Sai Mangat Ram dutifully pressed his feet.
Several times have I tried taking over this privileged duty, but each time with
a wave of the hand he has made me get up I do not know why he cannot
accept my service. Of course, I do not fathom the same depth in the word
‘service’ as people generally do. With me it would be a mechanical
performance of a regular procedure – like the habit of getting up early, or
brushing my teeth with a neem (melia indica) twig. Apparently, he does not
want to pin me down to this type of devotional practice. Or perhaps he knows
that in reality, it has its limitations; and he cannot accept a limited sort of
service.
For the last few days, Sai Mangat Ram has regularly been mixing pounded
opium pods with Mahant’s porridge to induce sleep and elieve him
temporarily from his excruciating toothache. So, pretty soon, in the early
hours of the night, he starts yawning. I make Sai Mangat Ram leave his post
and take over. In that semiintoxicated state he cannot tell Mangat Ram’s
hands from mine. But I am not astonished over his not being able to tell; I am
astonished at myself – with whom this convention-ridden act is so far
removed from genuine service that, after pressing his feet, until I rub and
scrub and wash my hands well, I am unable to sleep.
Can it be that a hatred of some sort has been growing in my mouth like the
pain of a bad tooth? And that whatever I eat, I must chew with this particular
one? Quite often it is all just too much for me to bear; like it is when the bad
tooth hangs loose in the jaw; yet cannot possibly be pulled out.
I sometimes wish: could I only some day, somewhere, lay my hands on the
tool that would enable me to pull out this troublesome tooth for ever from my
mouth!
At other times, I feel no pain at all. On the contrary, I take an immense delight
in pulling everything to pieces with this very molar.
Each and every thing … each and every thought …
As when this morning Mahant Kirpa Sagarji was chanting those holy verses
of his, and all those incantations seemed to be getting stuck in his teeth, the
idea that suddenly occurred to me then was: should he open his mouth wide I
would pull out each word of those verses with the pincers for the purpose in
my very own hands.
This is a dangerous thought for anyone to have – but for a temple priest, no
matter how young he may be – barely twenty years in this case – it is simply
treacherous.
But today, the whole day in fact, I have been relishing this thought with the
intensest delight – as if it were a bit of coconut I was chewing … The milky
juice coming up again and again in my mouth … I kept swallowing. And so
today, I have absolutely no pain.

O Lord!
Who knows what substance the Lord is made of? Out of sheer habit has this
word again come to my lips today.
Not out of habit – out of a breath of pain.
Dictating the prescription of makkar dhwaj Sheel Baba had said: “Do not like
a quack administer this half-baked substance to any one; should the mercury
not be fully cooked, the patient’s bones would melt.” And here I go today to
take that very half-baked stuff myself.
Other days I used to chew the coconut of hatred; today, I have taken the half-
cooked mercury.
Each life is perhaps a makkar dhwaj of a kind. Whenever the Lord breathes
the breath of a life into a being, He administers a dose of makkar dhwaj to this
life-in-name. and the person laughs, plays and blossoms into youth; and struts
about the earth with the majesty of youth.
Apparently when the Lord breathed the breath of so called life into my
nostrils, he administered as well this makkar dhwaj of life-in-reality as well.
That day, like an inexperienced doctor He had left the mercury half-cooked.
This half-cooked mercury then, I partook not today, I had it given me at the
time of my birth. Only today I am experiencing its effect since I feel my
bones have started melting.
Early this morning, at the crack of dawn, Mahant Kirpa Sagar had a pre
monition that the span of his life had run out. He leaned on Sai Mangat Ram’s
shoulders, rose from his bed and tottered to the temple.
He beckoned to me, put a coconut into my lap and tied round my head the
brocade turban. He first touched the feet of Shiva and Parvati. Thus he
bequeathed his designation of ‘Mahant’ on me.
Then he bowed down – bowed in fact to this designation newly bestowed on
me, and asked Sai Mangat Ram and Sai Gobind Sadhu to pay their obeisance
to me and after that asked whoever came to the temple to follow suit.
“I thought I’d smuggle something really big … But this is not the time.”
This was just a wish of his, otherwise he seemed quite at peace with himself.
As for me, I had never associated the word ‘capability’ with myself before or
even after. Rather, at that time I ‥
I was reminiscing about a sadhu by the name of Mangal who came and lived
at this habitation some years ago. He had the habit of killing any ant that
strayed it’s way to wherever he sat. how many he must have killed every day!
He used to say he was released them from bondage of life.
At the time the silver and gold turban was being tied round my head, I felt
exactly like an ant needing a Mangal Sadhu to release it from this life.
But I said not a word. I had rights to boths.
By evening, Mahant Kirpa Sagar was convinced that his life had run its
course and that that was his last day. He sent everyone out of his shanty.
Seeing his condition, so many of the devotees who had come to the temple,
were reluctant to leave until he bade them go home.
Then he called me to him. I went and sat at his feet. He made me get up from
there put me down by his side where he could see me.
Because of the inflammation, for so many days now, he had found it difficult
to speak. But the semi-enunciated words I had got used to. So it was not too
hard for me to follow whatever he said.
To fathom the depth of whatever he said will take ma whole life-time. What I
mean to say is – to hear him was easy enough.
“Just as the title on my head, and this turban that I have tied on yours, relieve
me for the weight on mine, so also must I get rid of the burden on my mind
my imparting a secret to you.”
Just as I had put the brocade turban on my head that morning without uttering
a word, so in the same way I bore on my chest whatever he said to me. I said
nothing.
Only it seems now that while my head will still remain intact, my chest will
not.
“Whatever title has been bestowed on you today was yours by right. You
alone could have got it … Just as whatever a father has, is inherited by his
son: riches from the rich father, poverty from a poor one … I have had
everything but a tongue. With this tongue I have never been able to call you
‘son’. At this moment the Lord alone is my witness – in the presence of the
Lord will I only once call you Son … my own Son…”
All these words – as they kept tumbling out of his mother, I kept piling on my
chest. To see, to know, and to understand these, there was no time. One by
one, I kept collecting them on my chest.
“Your mother is a pure soul … Do not blame her ever … The Lord Himself
appeared to her in a dream … He order this union … She only obeyed … And
only once did I own her … After that I never did rest my eyes fully on her …
Her wish had been fulfilled … She had yearned for a son … You … The thirst
I too had carried within me for ages had been assuaged … Your birth was the
birth of a Pure Soul …”
There was a knock at the door of the shanty. News had spread far and near of
Mahant’s condition. Since the early hours of this particular morning, news of
the inheritance of the temple also had perhaps traveled. So sadhus came, each
to inquire in person after his health. I received them in the shanty, offered
them a place to sit, and left.
Every evening, for hours, before I retire for the night, I wander about the
rocky tracks. The same tracks I tread today.
My feet knows these well enough. But so often have they been hurt by being
struck against stones …
I am rather shaky on my feet … as if my marrow-bones have started melting
and crumbling inside … Perhaps that is how it is on taking half-cooked
mercury.

If each new life be interpreted as a mere change of garb, I change mine twice
a day.
Being the Swami, I have one for the day, another for the night … an awful-
looking thing making me look like an ugly ant.
What humility does the word ‘ant’ suggest! By contrast, the word ‘Swami’
stands for ‘lordliness’ itself. My existence has two extremes.
Humility and lordliness.
When I retire for the night I see myself as a deformed black ant crawling out
of a hole, and seeing me creep on the ground, Mangal Sadhu thumps his
elephantine hand on me and sniggers: “Come, I’ll release you from this
life…”
When I wake up I find countless heads laid at my feet in obeisance and I am
raised from the ground, high – on my titular stool.
Between the two extremes is an extremely narrow and dark cavern; like the
maze leading out of the temple wall. And so often, to escape from these two
extremes, I wriggle into that cavern.
This is the cavern of my deep, dark thoughts: I try figuring out for instance,
how exactly could my mother have obtained the gift of a son from Mahant
Kirpa Sagar…
How Mahant Kirpa Sagar could have placed his benedictory hand on her
head, and then stage by stage, explored the rest of her body … perhaps in his
cave, or else beneath the dense cluster of trees nearby the temple … then how
the white and saffron clothes must have got mixed up, crumpled together.
“Your Mother is a Pure Woman …” This enunciation of Mahant’s mockingly
echoes to the accompaniment of loud and prolonged laughter in his cavern.
And then that laughter gets transformed into the loud wails and cries of a
living babe.
Even if I come out of this cave, the babe keeps wailing and crying around that
deep, dark place.
Hearing news of Mahant’s death hardly a person stayed away from paying
their last homage. Mother also came. But when she bowed down to his dead
body, I could tell that during that one brief moment, her face had become
completely drawn. I imagine she must certainly at that moment have
considered that with Mahant’s passing away she had been reduced to a semi,
if not complete, widow.
The state of her having been half-widowed did arouse a little sympathy in me;
no deeper feelings. I only felt I ought to have felt for her. And then I began
thinking: I ought to feel sorry for myself since with my father’s death I had
become an orphan in the real sense of the term. But I did not feel sympathetic
towards myself either.
I lit the funeral pyre – both by virtue of being his disciple and because I was
his son.
I bear both relationships in my person. Only the self is missing. Neither was it
there at the time of lighting the pyre, nor does it exist now.
I went through a peculiar experience today. From some town, a prosperous
looking woman came. Attending on her were two hand-maidens carrying
sweets and flowers for fertility-rite offerings at the temple. She had heard
about the greatness of this temple in ridding a woman of her sterility curse …
Her hands were folded in prayer.
“Lord Krishna relishes milk-and-cream swets,
Lord Shiva the intoxicating hemp …
Astride the bull with his consort Parvati –
O Bholanath – grant me my boon…”
A strange thought came to my mind. It is said – history repeats itself. Perhaps
history today was to have been repeated …
I nearly felt like saying in answer to her entreaties that a child obtained from
here would have to be offered at the altar of the same temple. Should she
accept the condition, I would lead her by the hand to my shanty …
A shiver of revulsion shot through my entire being. The one who would lead
her by the hand to the haunt would not be me; once again it would be Mahant
Kirpa Sagar – incarnate in me – who would be leading my mother to his
shanty …
That was why I said nothing to the woman. Stupefied, in fact, I shut my eyes.
She perhaps took that pose of mine as concentrated in prayer just for her,
since when I opened my eyes again, she in contentment had bowed and gone
away.
The mind is in a state of perplexity. I want to sympathise with Mother, but I
cannot. Then it occurs to me that some feelings should arise for her at least
after his death. I do so in consequence, want to sympathise with Mahant Kirpa
Sagar but self again, I find myself unmoved. In the ultimate analysis only the
remains. I conclude that out of the three characters, one should do. Even that
eludes my sympathy.
Like Mahant’s last days, even as the inflammation had subsided from his face,
his general condition had worsened; the village doctor had diagnosed that the
pus from his gums had slid right down and infected his liver. Ostensibly, my
hatred too has descended from my brow right into my spleen. I have no desire
to divulge anything, but the decaying processes have begun within me.

whenever I see a peach tree blossom, I get excited. My eyes cannot rest. I
imagine the blossoms come forth just to spite me; to mock at me. This is not
how I have found myself reacting only of late – for even when I was very
small, I then felt that I was a mere weed in a crannied rock. Perhaps no one
else knows that the peach tree has delved into my secret and is now breaking
into laughter at that.
“My roots go deep down into the womb of the earth; where pray are yours?”
It seemed so often to ask me this question, and then burst forth jubilantly –
into such spontaneous laughter, that so many of it’s blossoms would be
shaken off and wafted across to fall on me – as sometimes with bouts of
laughter you have accompanying sprays of spittle.
I gave up standing under that tree, even anywhere near it. But standing apart
and away, it could still laugh with greater vigour. That is why when its
laughter falls on my ears, my eyes start darting in all directions.
The roots of the peepul tree are embedded in the earth – as indeed are the
roots of all trees. But they mind their own business, rapt in the glory of their
yellows and greens. None of the others has the audacity to burst out
laughingly like the blossoming peach tree.
Why it should have to burst out so often, is beyond me when I know that I
have grown like a weed from a crannied rock; that I will have no interlacing
branches; that no branches of mine will sprout into blossom, and that no
blossom will yield fruit …
If they could they would, as when Mahant Kirpa Sagar had beckoned with his
dying breath – that very evening when he established kinship with that secret,
there was in his eyes still the feeble glow of that very secret: the glow that is
known as real parental love. Only I felt no responsive current flowing in my
veins. His eyes went dim – with perhaps a lurking desire. Then he closed
them. I am simply a weed sprouted from a crannied rock. If, like a seed, I had
sprouted from the earth, there would surely have been some capillary-
attraction from my side.
Sunderan too has had a similar experience. This was a day of reckoning for
her. Or for me.
“What are your orders for me?” I cannot tell how she found me out from the
forest stillness. Coming up close to me she entreatingly looked up with these
words.
“My orders? What for?” I could not understand her. All I had understood by
now was that when she emptied a veilful of flowers in the temple and from
under the flowers the palm of her hand seemed to touch my feet, that was no
mere figment of my imagination.
“Will Pooran not accept Sunderan in this life even?”” There were tears in her
eyes; and in her voice – the words seemed limp and wet.
“I am neither Pooran nor a prince,” I said simply. I was astonished. Why?
What the peach tree had come to know about the weed growing out of
crannied rock, Sunderan had not known.
When at praye-time she would empty out her veilful at the temple, her arm
would, snake-like, move under the heap of flowers, and at a touch of her palm
or fingers, my foot would become numb. But today I held myself off from
even that effect. Can the poison of a sting have any effect on a mere weed?
Nothing of hers can have any effect on me.
“My soul…” She was about to say something to that effect when I moved
away from her and stood apart. The parable that Mahant Kirpa Sagar had told
us about souls and super souls had been just about enough for me. I had no
desire to hear Sunderan’s version of it.
“O my Stone God! …” she said from the distance between us and scurried
off.
Sunderan is silly. Why did she have to cry? Why did she not turn round to see
the peach tree? Had she done so she would have learnt the secret that all the
blossoms burst forth simply to laugh at me.
I had not gone near the peach tree for many years. Today I stood under it for a
pretty long time. I wanted to know to what extent and for how long the
blossoms could go on and on laughing at me.

The laughter of the pink peach blossoms and the tears from Sunderan’s jet-
black eyes seem to commingle in a strange manner. Perhaps this laughter is
like seeds that sown in the earth will get watered with these tears … Or
perhaps the tars are the round seeds to be sown and the laughter, the water.
A strange type of sympathy has arisen in me. Mother got a glimpse of her
God in a dream; from His side, the signal for a meeting was given; Mahant
Kirpa Sagar obeyed God’s law, and between them they both achieved
something. But the third man – who is my Mother’s husband but who is not
my father – What did that poor soul achieve? Only the illusion that I am his
son? Even though I have not played around his courtyard, even though I have
not tilled his fields, yet I hold the light of his race onwards.
Can a word like “light” be so dark and black? Perhaps Mother has stolen a
sort of darkness. Until she could hide that darkness in her womb, she hid it.
When she could conceal it no longer, she bundled it up and made a
presentation of it to that poor soul: “See I’ve found the light that will illumine
your home.”
What is light? An earthen container, a little oil, a cotton wick – that was all
there, only the fire was missing. Fire stands for truth …
But perhaps lies can be as powerful as truth, and rubbed together can perhaps
raise a spark. The lamp was lit. But I can perceive one point of difference.
The path that is lit up by this lamp, has a fearsome silence and a fearsome
loneliness to it.
All those who have any relationship with this lamp, walk along the path lit by
it, but each is afraid of meeting the other wayfarer’s eyes; of acknowledging
his very existence. They have all broken apart from each other: each to bear
his loneliness – all alone.
Were I to make an effort even I would not succeed in associating the word
sympathy with Mother. Nor does the word establish a relationship with
Mahant Kirpa Sagar. To whatever extent possible if it can be brought to have
any bearing on anyone, it can be on the man who is in the eyes of the world –
my father.
The word ‘father’ sets off a thought process: could I only lift the weight of
that word from off that poor soul (it seems to me that the poor soul has borne
it like a burden) and thrust it on Mahant Kirpa Sagar. What then?
But now that too cannot be lifted. Had Mahant Kirpa Sagar been alive, I
might have seen to that possibility. But how can I make a corpse bear that
weight?
This morning, after completing my temple duties, my feet forcibly led me to
that part of the forest where that poor soul was ploughing his patch. What he
must have thought, I cannot say, but I forcibly took the plough out of his
hands. Till the sun had not risen I worked in his field like a hired labourer. I
was not finishing his work for him, but was thinking perhaps thus would
some part of the work be lightened.
About him I cannot tell, but I felt all the lighter thereafter. When I was
washing my hands at the waterway alongside the field, it seemed some slough
was being cleansed off. When I wiped the sweat on my brow with the cloth
on my shoulder, I felt as if I had been able to clean off a sticky bit of
relationship from my body.
Should I keep cleaning a bit every day that way, perhaps I would be able to
cleanse off all the slough.
O Lord!
I have never thought that if I helped dig or plough his field every day, the
villagers might watch; then would the sticky slough of relationship be
released and cleansed day by day or on the contrary get stuck more firmly.
No, I can wipe off nothing. Nothing can be wiped off. Rather would the hands
sweat every day; and the sweat would smell of that very relationship.
This is a curious phenomenon. There is absolutely no relationship but yet
there is the smell of that relationship spreading all over.
Had there been any living relationship, it would have in due course, died.
There would have been some reason for the smell; as indeed there is precisely
for the smell that a corpse reeks of. But when there is none, where then does
the smell come from?
God too cannot be seen, yet His fragrance pervades.
Is this relationship then godlike?
Apparently, if one overcomes these distinctions between smell and fragrance,
then this relationship is indeed godlike.
Or else it could be said that it is godlike – only the god is dead.

How would you define a relationship? Where there is none, it seems there is
one; and where none is seen, there is.
From the very beginning, I have known there is a relationship with mother.
And for twenty years I have intently looked for it; yet I have not seen it.
Whatever Mahant Kirpa Sagar told me when he was dying, I heard; only what
he said did not sink in. in that direction too I as intently search, but find no
clue.
Sunderan came this morning in her bridal finery. I could only see her eyes and
the big bridal nose-ring she wore. The rest of her face was covered with a
veil. Not many flowers were on the temple porch at that time, but when she
emptied her veil of them, lo and behold what a great big heap again there
was! She bowed the same way as she always did, reached out for my foot
from under …
Not only my foot but my head too seemed to have got benumbed today.
Then when she straightened up, I took a good look. Drops of water had settled
on the fine gold work as if the wedding nose-ring itself were weeping.
Tears ozzed into my eyes as sap does when a twig is broken from a branch.
But which of us is the branch? Am I?
Then was whatever broke from the branch, a relationship.
I had never associated the word with Sunderan. But then, where what was not
apparent, there is reality.
“My last homage …” These words reached my ears. I had not seen her lips
move: the nose-ring I had – as if the words I had heard had suggestively been
uttered by that ornament.
But why had her wedding-ring said that? And what relationship had her voice
with my ears?
Sunderan does not know it, but this too is a relationship of a type: the same as
incense has with an incense-burner.
I am the burner. According to the holy Prasher Smriti, the child of a woman
sired by another man when her lawful husband is still alive, is called kund
(burner).
Whatever is cast into a kund, is meant to be reduced to ashes. Inferentially, by
loving me, Sunderan wanted to be burnt up. Little does she know that I have
saved her from being the incense …

The concept ‘Mother’ is embodied in Woman as also in earth. There is a story

in Vishnu Purana of the time Vishnu went in the guise of a Yogi. On giving
herself up to him, Earth gave birth to a son named Hell.
So this story is not spun by me alone: it has its beginning in antiquity.
Since ancient times then, hells have been brought into existence.
What does it matter to them who are out to enjoy life? Those who are born
out of their pleasures are the ones ultimately to suffer. As I do.
This morning when Mother came to the temple, I thought to myself I ought to
pay my respects to her – exactly the way I bow down to Mother Earth.
When Earth gave birth to Hell, no one ever showed any disrespect to her. It
follows that I had no right to be disrespectful towards Mother either.
She characterizes Earth in every way.
Marijauna is a wonderful thing. Why had I not so far taken it, I wonder.
Today only I took the pipe from Gobind Sadhu’s hands, smoked a little and
what tranquility I got! And – what things have started coming to my mind!
And in that process features Charpat Yogi’s story. His birth was a visual
conception of Machindra Yogi’s. Nothing to do with the body, mind you – he
was conceived by sheer optical powers.
Who knows my birth too was a visual conception of Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s …
Undoubtedly, Mahant Kirpa Sagar also was great a soul as Machindra Yogi.
One must bow to the great. I feel sorry I did not pay obeisance to Mahant
Kirpa Sagar when he was alive. Charpat Yogi must have bowed down to
Machindra Yogi. I should have learnt at least this lesson from the story of
Charpat Yogi.
Charpat Yogi is like a big brother to me… I do not know why this did not
occur to me before … He was born the same way as I … It follows we are
brothers … I am extremely happy today … I have found my brother from a
page of a history-book …
Where has Gobind Sadhu disappeared to? A while back he was sitting
smoking pot beside the bushes yonder. Were I to see Sai Mangat Ram
anywhere around, I would ask him to fill a pipe for me too. Two puffs would
be enough. I would transcend into the regions of tranquility again …
The quest for mental peace is a grueling one …
In what pose am I sitting now? This is defined in the Holy Books as “Bhadra
Mudra”: that is to sit with the ankles supporting the coccyx. A yogic pose.
I do not know what is spread under me … It must be the particular mat we
have for the Bhadra pose … It is terribly hard … The Bhadra pose itself is
hard. It needs a bull’s hide to do it. To sit on this mat one has to will the
welfare of folks around … Whose welfare will I be capable of? … Cannot
those who derive super-powers by sitting in a particular pose on a particular
mat do any good to themselves?
What is this horrible smell? – Perhaps the bull’s hide under me exudes it. No,
it is my body that stinks … My hands, arms, chest – all stink. Like fish …
‘Mastya’ to be precise – the fish color’. Who was Mastya Odri? The female
who was fertilized by Vasu Raja’s sperm in the belly of a fish … My Mother
might be such a fish. I was conceived in the womb of a fish. There is the story
after all that Mahant Kirpa Sagar was in a yogic trance … I do not know why
this story is not in the Mahabharata …
Vyasa, the author, must have written this ancient epic, when he was
intoxicated by the hemp he had taken … No, he must have smoked pot …
Some Sai Mangat Ram must have been catering to such a need of his and he
must have gone on writing under its effect … Today Sai Mangat Ram has
stuffed a fine pipe. I too can compose a Mahabharata …
What is there so great about it anyway? … Simple to go on scribbling
whatever comes to mind … Where you get stuck, well … write just what you
like … Shukra was Brahma’s son. That is clear. But who indeed was Shukra’s
mother? He popped out into the world … from nowhere … Brahma had
arranged a purification fire ceremony, and many beautiful goddesses graced
the occasion. Seeing them, he got excited. As a result of the paroxysmal fit he
was seized with, his organsmic sperm fell forth … The Sun-God had no
sooner collected the semen and cast it in the fire when lo and behold, three
bonnie babes instantly sprang forth! … The gods bestowed one boy on Shiva
… just like that … one on Agni (fire) … as casually … and one on his lawful
father, that is, Brahma. This boy was Shukra (Friday)…
So what is there to fatherhood? No stigma is attached to the name of ‘father’
… That is why one must always remember who the actual father is… Since
the mother’s name alone gets sullied. It is her name t hat must really be
forgotten. What is there to the bringing forth of a child? It can be born out of
anywhere – out of a fish; out of earth; out of fire … When I got down to the
writing of my Mahabharata, I will write I was born out of a marijuana pipe …
Great! At the appropriate time it struck me that a man’s sperm is not
necessary for the conception of a child … In Padama Purana it is stated that
Mangala (Tuesday) was born out of Vishnu’s sweat. In Vamana it is stated
that a gob fell out of Shiva’s mouth, and out of that was born a boy …
So shall I write in my Book of Genesis that Mahant Kirpa Sagar sat smoking
Marijauna one day … a gob from his mouth fell into his pipe … and like a
marijuana flame, I leapt forth …
All this is possible … In the History of Ayodhya it is recorded that King
Sagar of the Surya (Sun) Dynasty, had a consort, Sumati, by name Airav
Rishi showered his blessings on her; that she was to give birth to 60,000 sons.
What was prophesied; came to pass. Out of Sumati’s womb sprouted a long
gourd, with 60,000 seeds to it. The Raja filled 60,000 pots with wheat and put
one seed in each pot. Ten months later, one boy sprouted from each…
This is recorded in the history book on the Hari Dynasty, that is why it has to
be true. And truth is truth. Down the ages. In this age it is also true that
Mahant Kirpa Sagar sat smoking marijuana one day when a gob fell out of his
mouth into the pipe, and I, a boy, lepat out like a marijuana flame …
When the curse of Lomash Rishi fell on a Brahmin, Bhoosode by name, the
Brahmin was accordingly transformed into a crow; but directly after the
transformation he got Enlightenment. And he lived long enough to tell the
story to Rishis and Munis.
Likewise I too am a Bhoosode crow … I too have come by knowledge … I
too can detail a tale for this age …

I have heard Mother is very ill. I have not seen her in the temple for so many
days now. Thoughts of a sort have come to my mind, but what they term
“paying a visit”, has not occurred to me.
She sent a neighbour across early today: “Do come and show me your face
once! This entreaty bears the force of all the thirty-two teeth I have.”
I was standing in the temple at that time – by the side of the Shiva and Parvati
statues – and on hearing these words, I felt I too had turned into stone like the
statues. It seemed easier standing on stone than making any effort to move.
This happened in the morning. In the afternoon, the neighbour came again,
“This is a dying woman’s entreaty – Show me your face once! Swear by the
thirty-two squirts of my milk, you will …!
Thirty-two teeth … thirty-two squirts … It seemed she had a surfeit of the
number: thirty two. Then suddenly it occurred to me that a woman is said to
have thirty-two graces.
I can say nothing upto the thirty-first, but I can say a thing or two about one
quality that emerges from the thirty-second and that is, innocence.
And I said to myself – since I have to go, I will go. Not to return the debt of
the thirty-two squirts of her milk, nor because of the entreaty I had heard sent
with all the strength in her thirty-two teeth – but because it is a part of my
duty as temple-priest to obey the call of any man or woman of the village.
One thought uppermost in my mind certainly was, that during the last hour of
her life, or the most difficult one, should she wish to hear some holy saying
from me, I would say: “Good Woman! Perhaps the other thirty-one feminine
graces you possess as well, but I speak only of the thirty-second – that is of
innocence. Could you only have a straight word with the man whose name
you have lived under all your life …”
I had this one thought when I left; and this one and only thought I kept
turning over and over, letting it influence me like the flame of marijuana
flickering in my pipe …
And now on my return journey, so many thoughts are surging, including the
one of the manner in which marijuana had gone to my head – like the
intoxicating effect sheer arrogance has on one. Perhaps arrogance too can be
put into a pipe and smoked …
And this thought also comes – the thirty-two graces are perhaps not the
endowment of woman alone, man also has as many appropriated to him. One
of these is welfare; and forgiveness as well. I spelt her thirty-two out to her, I
could very well have counted mine for my own benefit …
Should I not have attributed the virtues of welfare and forgiveness to myself?
Broken by the onslaughts of the years, absolutely helpless, and defeated, there
she lay on her bare string-cot. And away from her, at a distance, I struck a
pretty starched pose on a mat.
Now if I had condescended to sit down, I could at least have kept my mouth
shut …
Leaning forward, she perhaps wanted to touch me, to get the feel of me, my
feet or my head, but in the effort, her hand had fallen limp in the air …
Some wrinkles really that had remained suspended.
An expression of a sort of fearlessness had perhaps come over my face as I sat
there on the mat. On noticing this, tears welled into her eyes.
She thought she would perhaps succeed in washing that fearlessness away
with those tears …
But whatever she saw was not anything like dust settled on my face but like a
layer of skin that had grown there.
Exactly what I had thought, happened. She pierced my silence with the words
– “Any injunction for me?”
I had thought of an ‘injunction’ before going. So promptly I said, ‘Candour’.
It seemed all the wrinkles on her face had had to be turned on to get at what I
had uttered.
She was alone in her cubby-hole then. I was there of course, but by her being
alone I mean her kind, considerate husband had gone out into the courtyard.
No one was by her side.
“The Lord is witness to my candescence.” I was highly amused hearing her
feeble voice.
Like one terror-stricken, the pupils of her eyes dilated. She gazed fixedly into
my eyes. The terror reflected as in a mirror, cracked like a mirror …
Perhaps it had melted away …
Water, like molten glass, flowed from her eyes.
She turned herself over, her torso on the frame of the cot – and so dangled her
hand that it touched a corner of my mat – and touching the mat, my knee too.
The knee was instantaneously afire – with rage.
I could have pinned the hand down with my knee, but a streak of lightning
fury sprang from my knee up to my tongue. That was why it faltered. And I
simply said: “Mahant Kirpa Sagar told me about your ‘candescence’ with his
dying breath.”
Many years ago, Gobind Sadhu had killed a snake. When his stave had struck
it’s spine into two, the head-end and tail-end lay wriggling apart, and I stood
watching, a loathsomeness had overcome me – not towards the snake, but
towards Gobind Sadhu. While the snake writhed in agony, he seemed to have
enjoyed watching the scene.
Hearing my words, it seemed she too wriggled like that snake. My statement
had, like one blow of a stave, struck into her spine, and she was being broken
and crushed by it’s weight.
A detestation arose within me. For myself. For the words I had uttered; and
for hurting her with my words so that she lay struggling for life.
What was this type of peace I was bringing to a dying person?
I knew I was taking revenge, but was this the time for it?
So I felt the utmost hatred for myself towards my very existence; as if my
existence was a part of that very hatred.
Then came the thought: If I was a part of hatred, what of her who had given
birth to this bit of flesh? She was the mother, not of the child, but of that
hatred!
Then I moved away slightly. Silence had settled in the room; heavy like stone
from a rock. Neither she nor I had the power to break it.
But I proved wrong in my thinking. She hammered the stony silence away. “I
knew the day would come when I should have to go through the ordeal of fire
…”
Startled, I looked into her face.
Suddenly, she removed her entreating palm from my knee, and resignedly
coiled herself up in her cot.
Her voice too had the calm of a deep peace within by now. She quietly added
– “So often had it occurred to me that I would, like Sita in the Ramayana,
have to go through the purification test of fire …”
These words had something in common with Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s: “Your
Mother is a pure woman … do not ever lay the blame on her… The Lord
Himself appeared to her in a dream …”
But these words had perhaps deliberately been mixed up. I had never been
convinced about the ‘Lord appearance’ part, and now expected her too to get
down next to repeating that episode …
When man cannot control his destiny, the simplest thing he gets down to is:
leave it to God.
But she said nothing of the sort.
That is why I had to say it myself: “The Lord appeared in a dream just to say
that?”
Highly amused, she smiled: “No, my dear child. I never have had the good
fortune of seeing the Lord in a dream and hearing Him …”
It seemed Mahant Kirpa Sagar had made up the ‘appearance’ part just to
console me.
A downright lie it was then that must be lifted off the sick-bed in this hole and
set down to creep and crawl appropriately to the dead man’s grave.
But why did I want to sift truth from falsehood?
I got annoyed with myself. If, as was apparent, these folks were bent on
making me swallow a sugarcoated pill, why was I not swallowing it? After
all, what all had the poor souls not done to make the name of the Lord sweet
enough for acceptance …
“At one time the law of the husband held; in the next test today, it is the son’s
…” Something to that effect was she saying to herself.
My blood rose … By them both it was as necessary to make their progeny
swallow a lie as it was to get him to declare it palatable enough.
Not bothering to ascertain the extent of my anger, she continued: “Alas! I was
not fortunate enough to et a glimpse of the Lord. I simply obeyed him whom
all my life I considered my Lord. The Lord God appeared to him, I simply
obeyed his word as law.”
There was a knock at the door. I thought she would say nothing more since
her husband had come into the room.
“I have brought another dose of medicine from the doctor …” he announced
directly as he entered and then tried to pep her up, “The doctor said only one
more day would be difficult … should you struggle to pull through …”
“Yes, I had a difficult time today …” It appeared she smiled a bit, and then
lowered her hands towards the feet of her husband standing by her cot with
the medicine, and said: “Were I to leave the world now, while you, my lord,
are by my side … I should ask for nothing more … My only other desire was
to see the face of my son before I died … I am now at peace …” Then with a
movement of her hand she declined to take the dose.
The evening had by now closed in; she too seemed to have fallen asleep; so I
rose and left.
In the courtyard he sat cleaning the lantern. Rather hesitatingly, he put a hand
on my shoulder, giving me as it were, a paternal pat. From the touch of his
hand I could understand the cause of this hesitation; but what I could not
understand was the reason for his gratitude. Puzzled, I looked at him. It
seemed he wanted to say something, but he turned his eyes towards the room
and then quietly went on cleaning the lantern…
A feeling of doubt came over me – as if he knew everything and he wanted to
say: “If I, a layman, have forgiven her, could you not?”
I stole a glance at my robes – saffron in colour from head to foot, manifestly
in the service of the Lord. I had the feeling that his white clothes had
designedly a complaint against my saffron habit…
I looked once again over my shoulder. He was still standing in the courtyard,
wiping the lantern with a piece of rag. For how long had soot been settling on
the glass, I could not say. Or was it that an obstinate dark spot was not being
rubbed off…

what is the nature of the darkness that has no end …? Everyone has to suffer
the darkness of the womb. But that has a measured time-factor to it. And so it
can somehow be borne. Why does not my state of darkness pass off? Has time
shut me up in its dark womb and forgotten to let me out? Must years piling on
years bury me deep in Time’s dark womb?
Sai Mangat Ram sat relating the tale of a stupid pundit one day. Whenever the
women folk of his village, Akhay, went to find out from him the day, the
week, or the date of the month, he felt quite deflated since the holy fellow
could read neither a calendar nor decipher a horoscope. After thinking hard
over his problem, he found a way out. He took an earthen pot and on
discovering somehow the first of the month, he put one dropping of his goat
into it; the second day, a second; the third day, a third. And so on. Every day
remembered to put one dropping into the pot. Thereafter, whenever a woman
came to ask him the date he would count the number of droppings and
accordingly reply. If there happened to be one dropping in the pot, it was the
first of the month; if two, the second; if thee, the third … And thus he
managed. But one day he forgot the pot in his courtyard. And when the goat
eased itself in it, it got filled to the brim. The following day when a woman
came to find out the date, the pundit looked into the pot, but could not get to
the end of the count … The woman casually calculated it to be the ninth. To
get out of his state of discomfiture, he settled for the same date – “It is the
ninth, but, … this ninth is a recurring factor …”
My heart bleeds, but here am I acting the entertainer. I am down in the dumps,
but an amusing story comes to my mind. Society, is apparently, as foolish as
that pundit. It forgot the key in the courtyard when my days in the darkness
were being counted. And so with this tale of mine as the recurring factor, will
cover up its mistake and plaster up its stupidity.
Endlessly dark.
It seems I have been cast straight out of the darkness of the womb into the
cave of the temple. And how many centuries long the cave is, who can tell?
Each question is measurable in terms of darkness. The only difference is that
if the question is a small one, it crawls and cries like an infant; but if it is a big
one, it gropes, hands outstretched in the blinding blackness and strikes its
head against the cave walls.
In the darkness of the womb, I must have hit out only with my hands and feet,
for I learnt to crawl in the darkness of the cave; and now the brow of my
youth strikes its head against the walls of the cave…
The limbo continues to be as labyrinthine; the questions only have forked off
– like my limbs…

My limb do indeed seem to be getting stuck even in the loose folds of my

robes … as if the rounded parts of the limbs had become pointed and angular.
Many years ago, when I was still at school, a class fellow of mine took me by
bus to Pathankot.
Not to the wide bazaars of Pathankot. To some narrow lanes. And those lanes
were peopled with women only: some like school-girls with tiny silver rings
in their ears, some were big, fat women with walnut-coloured lips; and on the
thresholds were wizened old names smoking hookahs.
There was no man anywhere around. As if the older women had given birth to
the younger ones all on their own.
Two of us, boys of school-going years, certainly looked lost. Like the
gurgling of the hookah sounded the gurgling of the old dames’ laughter at us –
although my friend had done a sensible thing in making me take off my
saffron toga and getting me into white shirt and pyjamas before boarding the
bus. He had planned all that. He had stuffed the change of clothes into his
school-bag before leaving his house.
He seemed pretty well-acquainted with those women. He greeted a few with
the words ‘Rama Satya’ (God is Truth).
The gurglings of the women and their hookahs seemed to have commingled.
I had perhaps wiped the sweat off my forehead from time to time into my
shirt sleeves. He had gripped my arm as we were about to enter a door-way.
“If you start sweating like that, your girl will make a fool of you.”
My girl?
Now that was certainly a word unfamiliar to me. Such as its impact on some
part of me that my legs began to quake under me.
Then on entering a small dark room, I had with considerable diffidence sat on
a hard-board divan.
A moment later, two girls had come on – one had covered her head with a
deep crimson veil; the other, with a purple one. My friend held the crimson-
veiled one by the arm and sat down beside her; conversely, the purple-veiled
one held me by my arm and sat down beside me on the same divan.
Then as if I had taken a good long drink of hemp, I felt suffocated. I could
hardly breathe …
The purple-veiled girl who had taken charge of me, led me into a dark
chamber. I all but collapsed on the divan there – due perhaps to the darkness
of the veil she had curtained off the place with. All was purple before my eyes
… more of a wettish purple shade …
I cannot say whether my body was sinking or swimming in it, but a sort of
rigour had set into my entire anatomy – with each bone getting stuck in the
depths of that colour …
For a moment only it seemed I had the strength to free my bones from it …
But the colour was wet, and my bones had started slipping out of my control
in it…
And then it seemed I had been engulfed by a still deeper layer of the purple
around – I had fallen with such force of gravity that all parts of my body
broke …
And that I was just a lump of flesh …
And from the flesh came a peculiar smell …
And with the smell I felt dizzy. And eventually came an awareness. I had to
wrench myself away as well as I could from where I lay.
I had to splash my hands about a great deal to raise myself … hands with a
difference – hands that had explored unfamiliar masses and bits of flesh: bits
as small as lips and as slender as fingers.
And round mounds … the feel of which had set them a-tremble.
The purple colour was watery no more, it was thickening to a density … that
when finally set – had the quality of laughter to it.
I quickly dressed myself: rather confused by its laughter.
Only when I emerged into the light I saw I had slipped my clothes on inside
out.
This incident took place years ago: distasteful still – whenever I think of it.
I have often tried to explain it away by saying to myself it was my friend who
had contrived to take me by bus there, and that his clothes had done the trick.
Alas, by shedding those clothes I had not been able to shed that experience.
Then I also wanted to reason it out another way. There was no sense in
blaming it on anyone. If it was to happen, it did happen. There was all there
was to it. I did not ever want to think of it.
This thought came to my mind only today. The folds of the habit I habitually
wear seemed to get caught on parts of my person – the roundnesses seemed to
have become pointed and angular.
Then it seemed to me – my body could go charging today like a bull in heat
and gore the sides of anyone coming its way…
So I betook myself a great distance away from the village, and flung off my
saffron robes. I had taken a change of clothes all bundled up – a striped
pyjama suit and a length of material that would serve as turban.
I was disguised. Climbing into a bus I reflected it was not me: it was another
man in disguise who had taken a seat …
But when I reached there, and was sitting in a dark chamber of a narrow lane,
desiring to sink myself in crimson or purple, my feet got stung as if there
were nettles in those colours.
All the tightness I had felt in my body had traveled to my feet.
I sprang up and stood – on a pedestal as it were of stone.
I tried looking down at my feet but could not see them. They were lost under
visionary flowers.
“Why have you brought these flowers?” I had perhaps asked in a fit of
petulance.
A stifled voice came from the chamber – “Where are the flowers? There are
no flowers here. I have brought no flowers.”
But there was a whole heap of flowers there: piled so high that both my feet
were completely covered by them. I could neither see nor more my feet.
Someone from that chamber wanted even to come to my help, taking me by
the arm wanted even to shift me around from there, or else perhaps, wanted to
seat me and satisfy me…
But the palms of someone’s hands were also touching both my feet.
By the touch of those palms perhaps the feet lost their power of sense.
Void of a peculiar part of my sense since I could move – not forward perhaps,
only drag them backwards. I dragged myself step by step back to my
habitation.
All angularities had fallen off my limbs and my saffron habit clung fearfully
round my beck.
My body is parched and dry. It has dipped into no colours. Perhaps this aridity
is known as purity …
But my feet are wet. Perhaps they had been buried long under heaps of wet
flowers, that should explain why.
Or else perhaps – my feet have eyes that weep.
Sunderan… Sunderan… you witch! What spell have you cast on me today?
Whatever it is, it is outside me and yet it pervades my very being.
There is a story in Skanda Purana about one of the daughters of the Sun-god
having been born from Shade (Chhaya). On having been possessed by Sun –
did Shade have any existence left? I wonder. Must have. She would not have
otherwise been called Shade (Chhaya).
That is why even when one stands facing the sun, the shade continues to exist.
I had renounced Sunderan, but her pervading presence confronts this state of
renunciation.
There are certain relationships that permeate through all states. Had they
sprung from an acceptance of life and been sustained by it, all was well. But
when they are born out of an abjuration of it, they not only grow, they grow
old along with man: even live on after him…
My mind conjures up a parable from Brahma Vavrat Purana, Vishnu wanted
to break through the chastity of Tulsi, Sankh Choor’s wife. So one day he
disguised himself as her husband and slept with her. When Tulsi came to
know of his deception, she cursed him that he would be turned into stone.
Vishnu in turn cursed her; that her hair would be turned into the Tulsi Plant
and her body into the river Gandak. And to this day, each pebble in the bed of
the Gandak is the Shaligram (phallic) image of Vishnu. That relationship
survives to this day – beyond death: so much, so that on the moonless night of
August each year, people worship Tulsi and celebrate the nuptials of the plant
with Shaligram (phallic).
What types of curses were those that got changed into blessings? …
I cannot tell whether Sunderan’s renunciation was a blessing or a curse;
whatever it was, it is still there. She has an entity of her own, yet she reigns
within my being. Perhaps both blessings and curses like sunshine and shade,
can exist at the same time, in the same place.
King Prithvi was born out of his father Vani’s right thigh. Since Vani was a
posthumous child, the people attacked him again and again with rush arrows
till he died. But when they realized they needed a ruler, they began rubbing a
thigh of his; incidentally the left. A babe was born out of it with a sparkle, but
because he was frightfully ugly, they could not give him the throne. That was
why the Rishis started rubbing the right thigh. From this came a spark and
with a similar sparkle was now born a babe – the one who was named Prithvi
…
If from one thigh an extremely ugly child can be born, and from the other
high of the same person an extremely beautiful one – curses and blessings too
can course down the same bloodstream.
Sunderan is nowhere; and yet paradoxically – she is everywhere. The vale
adjacent to the temple is full of mist today – so dense and icy, that were I to
try putting my foot on it this end, I could smoothly skate across to the other.
The black, blue and green shadows of the trees are softly lying along this
sheet of mist. Only now and then they seem to move; to turn over to the other
side.
A few days ago a traveler arrived. Who knows who he was. He rested here for
the night and then wanted his way towards the Kulu valley. He said he would
break his journey on his way back. He has not returned yet, but he is bound to
since, to ease his burden, he has left a bundle of books behind as memento.
Not merely books – I should say memory of himself, for again and again my
mind has been drawn to him.
The day he came had been bright and clear, but when asked what part of the
country he came from, he had replied, “The city of mists.”
When asked where that city lay, he laughed and simply said, “All cities are
misty.” After a pause, he posted the same question another way, “Can you tell
me of any spot on this earth that is not misty?”
I had thereupon looked all around me and then towards the distant mountains
and back again. Seeing how he had puzzled me, he had laughed softly, “You
can see rocks and stones everywhere very well, I can tell you that, but through
this mist one man cannot see another’s face at all.”
I had shot a glance at him and then had turned it back upon myself with the
question, “You mean to say you cannot see my face?”
He sat silent for a while, and had drawled the reply, “Supposing I said I
cannot – that I can see only your saffron robes – what then?”
I was not interested in his seeing my face nor the “self” concealed behind the
mask, that is why I parried his question. “Never mind the face, you can see
the saffron robes all right. Are not these enough for you to know me?”
“Enough to be sure, considering the way the world goes.” He had chimed in,
laying himself wrapped up in a rug in a corner of the verandah.
Twilight was settling in, but I could see through the dusk he had not yet fallen
asleep. As I placed an earthen lamp and a bowl of water by his side, I took a
good look at his face. I could not say anything much about it, except that
never having seen one like it before, I wanted to keep a distinct print of it in
my memory – as one plucks as uncommon flower to keep beside the pillow
for a while.
I was about to turn my back when he said, “Don’t take the bit I said about the
saffron robes too seriously, my friend!”
I had laughed outright at that emollient. “Anger and saffron robes do not go
together,” thinking at the same time of that pet phrase of my gurus, who in
actual fact so frequently kept flying into fits of temper and casting curses
about over such petty mattes. That was why I had drawn a deep breath and
added, “If angry, it’ll be the saffron robes that’ll be angry, why me?”
He flung the wrap off his shoulders and sat up on his rug with the comment,
“You’ve said it! If gay, it’s the apparel that’s gay; if angry, it’s the clothes
again. Where are the wearers? If they are anywhere around, I see them
through this mist …”
Then he broke into peals of laughter, “The whole world is divided by clothes-
lines,” he said, “by costumery; in wretched rags are the unclean; those in
partly clean ones are the worldlings; and the ones in glittering garb are the
great masters of the world …” And drawing me by the hand, he drew me to
his side on the rug to spell out these distinctions in greater detail. “The others
in brocade and satin, the Maharajas and their ministers, are the custodians of
this world; and – the saffron-robed, the custodians of the world above.” He
slapped me hard on my shoulder and continued, “to such a degree, that you
can distinguish between one part of the earth and another, only from clothes;
from the variations in dress … Each little part is guarded not by men, but by
uniforms. Had they really been men, where would there have been any need
of wars? … Can man really kill man? Wars are all between uniforms. And
between flags …”
He had begun gasping by now – as if breathing were too big a job for his little
lungs. And, let alone the clothes he wore, as if his very body were too
constricting for him.
“You seem to have attained godhood,” I had patted his back and covered his
shoulders with the wrap that had slipped off.
He did not laugh this time. On the contrary, he shrank within himself and
bemusedly suggested, “We’ll try reaching Good when we find some free time;
let us try reaching out to ourselves first … How can we see God through this
mist when we cannot see our own faces?…
Though tempted to reply, I did not and quietly got up. In the morning I packed
a maize bread and a lump of brown sugar for his journey. He prodded his
bundle, took out a pack of books and lifted up the rest. “Here is my security.
When I pass by this way again, I’ll collect it,” he assured me.
“That’s all very well with you. But what I have on my chest and on my mind
cannot be cast off.” I had tried to be free and easy in thus measuring our
respective weights.
“Of course, it is to wash these off that one has to go on washing the body, else
why would one have to go carrying it about?” His rejoinder too had been
laughingly in the same spirit.
Pilgrims may come and pilgrims may go, but they must take the water of the
temple stream in their cupped hands as if they were all for emptying it. Only
when he had laughed, it seemed to me there was a sort of liquidity to his
laughter that had rather brought the waters of the stream higher.
When he was leaving, I said nothing beyond asking: “I hope the rights of
reading these books are not reserved?”
His steps had faltered. He looked intently into my face as if registering its
lineaments from misty layers with all the exactitude possible.
“The effort to attain knowledge is like carrying, the way Shiva did, the river
Ganges on your head.” He replied with a smile.
“In lieu of all those references to the Ganges in the Puranas, had what you
said been inserted, a fine good reading would it have been,” I casually
remarked.
“And what references are there in the Puranas?”
“A great many,” I answered. “Out of which one is that it is holy water from
Vamana Avatar’s feet. When Vamana’s foot reached Brahma’s realm, Brahma
washed his feet and collected the water in his bowl, and at Bhagirath’s
request, flowed it down that soil. Shiva collected the waters in the locks of his
hair and then shook these off on the earth. The ultimate trickle became the
sources of the Ganges.”
“What other story is there?”
“In Valmiki’s Ramayana there is the one about Menaka giving birth to Ganges
and Uma in the Himalayan ranges. In due course, Shiva brought forth his
semen into Ganges, but Ganges could bring herself to accept him. she flung
out the womb from her body and went and took refuge in Brahma’s bowl.
Only upon Bhagirath’s entreating her, did she agree to come out and descend
on the surface of the earth.”
“Pretty entertaining stories,” he had remarked amid uncontrollable laughter.
“Yet even in these, Ganges recurs as a symbol of knowledge.”
“From the part about Ganges being unable to accept Shiva and the rest of it, it
follows that knowledge of any kind is difficult to contain within one-self.”
When I said that, we both laughed the laughter of enlightenment – as a float
between the two extremes: clarify of vision and nescience.
It is a different matter altogether that I kept standing there long after he had
left.
There was no mist that day. But today again, the vale adjacent to the temple is
dense with it. In a way, the mist he spoke of was always there, is still there
and will continue to be there. Only this much can I vouchsafe for today – that
it has receded into the distance.
But I cannot define this distant mistiness. Dense and white like a layer of ice,
but in addition to the black-blue and green shadows of trees, there is another –
spread softly over the mist.
I do not know whether it is the shadow of my existence, or embodied in that
pilgrim, the shadow of some aspect of knowledge …

I think I have had rather a close look at that pilgrim today: at him and at
myself as well.
From the pack left by him as surety, I read a book today. Each page of this
book was like a sheet of glass, I could clearly see not only my face but sub-
merged in thoughts of him, I could see his as well.
Perhaps that is the sole difference between an ordinary looking glass and the
glass the creative artist looks through.
The character of the story I read is a school-master in Japan. He disappears
one day. Everyone knows that he had gone to the beach for relaxation on a
holiday. Although it is only a half-day’s journey from the town, there is no
news of him. enquiries are made through the newspapers and by the police,
but no clue is found.
‘Cherchez la femme’ is the one thought that occurs to everyone. His wife
alone convinces everybody thee is no woman imaginable in his case. That is
how the thread of the story is broken off from imagination and left hanging in
the air.
The only bit of evidence everyone subscribes to is that when he left home for
his journey, he had an empty bottle in his hand and a tiny net. His only
passion was to collect newer and newer species of insects. Hence the only
tools could have been the tools of his trade, namely, the empty bottle and the
tiny net.
On the expiry of seven years, any person reported to have disappeared, is,
under Section D of the Civil Code, declared to be dead.
But the laws governing death are different from codified laws … Beyond the
boundary of a seaside village our hero had heard of, the earth appears white
and dry. Uninhabited still, it is one long stretch of sand. What lures him on is
the smell of the sea-air. He wipes the sweat on his brow and walks on and on
till he sights a deserted village. A potato-patch comes to view but the sand
seems to stretch unendingly on. The strange thing about it is that the path he
follows goes higher and higher although any beaten track ought really to go
down to a beach. He once studies the map he takes out of his pocket, asks
something of a girl passing by as well, but does not find an answer. At some
places he sees piles of shells and fishing nets. He gets a kind of courage from
these and resumes his journey. The still stranger aspect of the locale is, that
the houses on the sides of the track should be higher, but they are on a much
lower level – sunken in fact, in hillocks of sand. Then appears a slope going
steeply down into the frothing and foaming sea-tides. From these sandy parts
he has to find the rare insects he has come in search of.
With intense interest he sees the heaving mass of sand – wriggling up and
subsiding like a restless soul.
The sand moves under his feet too, but they recoil at the touch of nature’s
laws: at the touch of these shifting sands.
Some old men fearfully look at him with suspicion thinking he has something
to do with the government. But he allays their fears by giving them to
understand that he is a mere school-master. He enquires for a place to spend
the night and one man promises assistance. Night is falling fast. The place
does not yield insects of any exciting value to him. worn out, he puts off the
rest of his search to the morrow.
He is offered a house nesting in a deep hollow for a night’s rest. Sliding down
a rope he lands on its roof. The old man who has acted as guide returns.
Seeing sand constantly falling on the roof of the house, he feels scared, but
consoles himself with the thought that after all, it is a question of only one
night with him.
Releasing one end of the rope down to the point of touch with the roof, the
old man had called out: “Open the door, Grandma!” But the woman this
traveler sees is still youthful. Lamp in hand, she welcomes him.
She informs him, “There is only one lamp in this hut, if you can bear to be in
the dark, I can go to the back and cook something for you.” He replies,
“Before I eat anything, I should like to take a bath.”
Astonished at the avowal of such a need, she agrees conditionally. “Should
you be able to hold on until day after tomorrow, I could arrange a bath for
you.”
“But I intend being here for one night only,” he answers disconcertedly, for
the woman seems to have taken no notice of what he has said.
She serves him fish soup. But when she holds a paper-umbrella over his plate,
he looks intrigued. She explains, “So much sand blows about here, that were I
not to provide such protection thee would be just sand-grains to eat from the
soup-plate. Were the wind to move in this direction,” she informs him further,
“and I not to keep clearing the sand off the roof all night, the entire hut could
be buried under it by morning.”
In a short while, he feels sticky all over, and the sand seems to blow and settle
in layers in his eyes, in his nose and in his throat.
Early next morning,, there is a call from some high, far-off place. And
dangling at the end of a rope appear provisions, not for one, but for two
persons. Strange pictures and patterns of grains of sand appear. He can
comprehend nothing. The woman is busy shovelling sand from the door.
“May I lend a hand?” he offers. She declines his help. “The first day? No, I
could not put you to so much trouble the very first day.” He is perplexed, but
still bent on helping, he tries taking the shovel from her hands. She gives in.
“All right. If you insist on goading yourself to work from today. There take
that shovel. They have sent one for you.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” This was getting altogether too much for him. If only he
could go back the way he came at once! Only there is no way of climbing the
steep slope for him to get on to the path.
As a prisoner of the sands, he stands …
To save the village from getting buried, it is essential that all the sand be
removed. There are menials just for this job. In exchange, the village
headman arranges to send dried fish, some flour and water down by rope to
them.
“This means that the sole purpose of the existence of you folks is to keep on
battling with sand?” He asks anxiously.
“Yes – only to remove sand. That is the only way to preserve this village.
Should we decide to lay down our tools, the entire village would get buried
within ten days …” But the laws of the sands being what they are – his mind
tells him, nothing can be done. Great dynasties too get buried in the sands of
time … What is the meaning of life? Man lashes out at the waters of vast
oceans in the efforts to find a firm footing somewhere.
His helplessness gets stuck in his throat. If only he could climb the wall of
sand and get out of this sandy grave, but …
No answer to this ‘but’ can be had anywhere.
“Why have they made me a prisoner of your sands here?” In utter defeat he
asks the question of the woman.
“Because I was alone. Both sand and solitude would have swallowed me up
otherwise.”
He is wild with rage. But anger too ultimately settles down like sand in the
systeme. When time is slipping fast the hunger of his despair grabs at what it
can from the woman’s body.
There seems to be no outer compulsion. Only sand … His anger with her
finally merges like the grains of sand in the sand-mass.
He is in a sandy grave, yet he keeps brushing the sand particles off.
A state comes when nothing besides breathing the breath of life matters any
more. Then life is reduced to mere clichés-whether a body smells of soap,
stinks with sweat or sand, the one sustained effort of homosapiens is to keep
the precious body going …
I had not come face to face with life before. The book finishes, the story goes
on.

I am a seed sprouted from Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s life. But even when lying in
a garbate-pit, each seed is beholden to the earth for survival: indeed to sprout
and spread out in the course of its life. I can do nothing about the thoughts
emerging from my existence.
Should they bear bitter fruits of hatred, then too what can I do?
Therein lies the helplessness of a seed.
I have heard them talk about my appearance (not that I resemble Mahant
Kirpa Sagar in any way) finding similarities with Shiva’s own handsome
form; complete with the similes of the milk-and-saffron, or milk-and-honey
complexion.
Colours too have a distinct quality of casting characteristic illusions. Were a
man to think of a simile to extol a particular colour, I imagine he would think
first of the snake-cob – no other variety of corn-cob has a more infatuating
colour: as if there were a glow of fire to it. But the popular name given to the
snake-cob is ‘death-cob’. A touch of it on the lips and …
Certain herbs and shrubs from the common soil poison only the lips at a
touch. But the herbs and shrubs growing out of one’s mind can poison the
eyes, the brow, the breath, the thought sof the very dreams of the person
concerned.
All of a sudden sometimes, I seem to hear Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s voice from
the temple-stream. But it is my ears that are deceptive, not the voice. And yet
it seems as if it were playing tricks with my ears.
Today I have a mind to play a trick on it. High time I had my turn. I know it
does not exist. Some day it might prove so but the time’s not yet. So far the
voice seems to be true.
All this perhaps is because his voice had a liquid quality to it more like the
water of a stream, so that even when it came forth slowly, it had a certain
depth to it and also a force within that made it flow. Be it stone, pebble, leaf,
or dirt of the hands: anything thrust in, would unconcernedly be carried away
by the stream; or else the water would flow over as it does over feet dangled
in a stream.
Water that flows has perhaps only eyes, no ears. His voice too flowed straight
on. It never could halt even when it heard other voices around. Wrangling,
backbiting, trivialties went on in our habitation just as much as these things
go on in every other home. There were cobwebs as well in corners. Yet I
would make so many allowances for Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s voice as like the
flow of the stream it could ignore all such trash and as unconcernedly go on.
And it had two distinct strains to it – one, a deep, heavy bassfull of
compassion; the other – subtler, had a light pensiveness so merged into the
forest airs as to lose its timbre altogether.
The first type of voice had the unique capacity to influence and carry all
alongwith it; the second was totally indifferent.
Whenever any one talks about it, the first type of voice comes up first. For the
same reason perhaps. Or else possibly because they had been influenced by it.
Such, however, was not the case with me. I think one can occasionally dump
the load one carries physically; but the type of load on the other self, the type
that turns breaths into sights and heaps up on the chest – what is one to do
about that?
I had heard the second voice coming so often from the temple stream. All by
himself – morning, noon or night, Mahant seemed to have got lost in some
part of the forest. Perhaps he wanted to synchronise the plaint with the
whistling winds: “Without a friend, bereft of help have I been for ages now.”
These words at one time would fall from his lips like yellowing leaves; at
another, would seem to come forth like tender green ones, and then back
again they would take on the yellow-leaf tint …
Treading softly on my toes, I had so often followed this voice. I do not hold
my ears guilty for thieving thus; only sometimes I felt the pain of the strain,
or rather – a hatred, like pus, would start throbbing in my ears…
I cannot say whether this hatred was genuine. If so, had I really wanted to free
myself of it, the simplest thing was-not to hear it, I could have plugged my
ears with a wad of unconcern. Contrarily, I often found myself following the
voice. It was not the voice that led me on – my toes kept going after it. Had I
no ear even, a restlessness for it would still have kept whirring within me:
stirring me on.
It is indeed now dead; yet it continues to grip my imagination so that the dead
voice comes back to life. No echo of it! It sometimes literally comes alive in
my very ears. My lips begin to quiver so under its weight, that they slowly but
surely move to release the words – “Without friend bereft of help – have I
been for ages now …”
A saintly fakir put it thus:
“When from One, Thou multiplied into Many, Thou gavest proof of Thy
Might – Thou earnest us from Thy Sap, we learnt to accept our lot.” That
saint of a fakir must have experienced a loneliness akin to Mahant Kirpa
Sagar’s. Without friend or helper, had he to go through it all…
‘One into Many’. From the one, I multiplied into many. Who can tell why this
idea emanated from that Immeasurable Pillar of Strength? All have got
divided into little entities – shut into shells of loneliness.
Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s existence too had been one such piece of loneliness. So
for fear of being completely wiped out of existence, he had desired siring
another small piece – Me!
One person’s will thrust upon another …
I hate him not as a person, it is that will of his …
I … loathe …
There seems to be no justification for my existence. Therefore my hatred
seems justified …

He came today. He? Who? Why, the same Dina Nath! He came in his simple
home-washed, clean white clothes. Wet with sweat and a little crushed
perhaps, but pure like him, innocent-looking and as limp as the words from
his lips.
He kept twisting a corner of the piece of cloth around his neck, as if he still
had not finished cleaning the lantern glass with it.
I cannot say how that face so completely absorbed in cleaning the lantern, had
remained stuck in my memory. I wondered how many years he had been at
wiping and shining its glass.
He came at an hour when I am relatively free. This seemed no coincidence.
He had checked on this before coming. I was alone at that time, gathering
sticks in the evening. Apparently, he knew about that …
March days can be maddening. The tender leaves of the trees change colour
each second of any given hour, and with the faintest breath of each passing
breeze are kept a-quiver; it sometimes seems they fall fearstruck at the foot of
the trees …
Their sweet innocence moves my heart so …
So was my heart moved seeing him …
I think he too silently stole a glance at the trees – trees that were being
denuded of their foliage every other moment; and then lowering his eyes, he
had accepted that tree-like existence …
“I have come to have a word with you …” He did not say so in as many
words. But to me it seemed he did, as trees seem to foretell the fall in the
month of September …
“She is your mother …” he actually said, and then was silent.
Where was the need to say as much? I knew it And he knew that I knew.
“I do not know how many days more she was to live, only a few moments
perhaps, she is struggling for life … Have you heard the story of the princess
whose life had got stuck in the parrot’s? They could not kill her if they tried.
But when somebody wrung the parrot’s neck, the rattle in her throat rang her
end too… She is not yet ready to die either. Her life too has been caught in
another’s … your’s … till she gets one last glimpse of you … You look away
… she lingers on. Should you look upon her once as ‘Mother’, she would
come back to life … From death … she would be resurrected …” He said part
of all this haltingly, part of it all in one breath.
I could tell that out of pity for me he had come to lead me out of my Cave of
Darkness. But little did he knew that if he took just two more steps, he too
would have got lost in the murkiness forever.
If ever in my life I have felt sorry for anyone, it has been for him. I
instinctively felt like clamping my palms to his lips and stop him from saying
anything more.
The wind was not very strong, but strong enough to bring the leaves down the
trees.
And I had no strength to half its onslaught with my hands.
“She is a nouble soul …” The words stunned me. I did not hear the sentence
finish. Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s dying words ‘she is a pure woman’ came to my
mind.
And I thought – instead of telling me, a third person – if these two men had
told each other, what then?
Would both have said the same about her? And I thought – Mahanta Kirpa
Sagar is dead, but what he said is not. Supposing I were to tell this innocent-
looking man the truth? But again – if he chooses to knock himself about in the
Darkness of the Cave, what can I do about that …
And I reflectively replied – “I know it. That is precisely what Mahant Kirpa
Sagar said.”
A long time ago I had read a story from the Mahabharata. A Rishi arranged a
penitential feast on a large scale. The raja sent twenty-one bulls as sacrifice.
But the Rishi as generously gave away the same bulls as alms to other Rishis,
and asked the raja for more. Enraged at this effrontery, the raja sent dead cows
instead. The Rishi became demoniac. He announced another feast, much
bigger than the first, planning destruction of the niggardly raja. In the same
ratio as some of the cows were flung into the sacrificial fire, was the
proportion of the raja’s realm destroyed …
And I thought – whatever I had said was like flinging dead cows’ flesh into
the fire; the heaven that man standing before me is living in, would be utterly
destroyed …
At that moment Mother seemed to me like a dead cow…
But no heaven can be obtained by delusions; heaven can be gained by
acceptance of the naked truth. Whatever I might say, I could obviously not
destroy his heaven. Much less now when in answer to what I had told him, he
had himself said, “He must have said so because this is the truth.”
At first, I could scarcely believe myself not really wanting to destroy his
heaven. That was why, after a pause, I said somewhat more clearly, “He also
told me that God had appeared to that pure soul in a dream … and
commanded her…”
It seemed that if I had not yet brought his heaven crashing down, I had at least
made a breach in it. And I added, “For such commandments, God chooses
only holy souls …”
I thought he would shudder at what I had told him, and stutteringly ask,
“which God – the One above? Or the one in saffron robes? And, which
commandment? What type of a commandment?” But he asked me no
question. It seemed that he did shudder a bit, for some time kept looking at
the naked trees from which leaves were continually falling.
“Yes, I chose that noble soul for my commandment. This was my
commandment … she had always looked up to me as her god …” he had said.
On saying this, neither did his face reflect the innocent expression I had
always noted, nor his voice the earlier subdued manner.
I was reminded of my visit five or six days ago, she too had said something in
the same vein, “I was not so fortunate as to see God even in my dreams and
get some message. I obeyed only him who all my life had been a God to me.
God had appeared to him, I had only obeyed his commandment.”
It seemed a breath of mine had got choked with one of the ribs in my breast.
“She is such a noble soul that if I had commanded her directly, she would
have fallen in tears at my feet and would have pleaded with me to take back
my commandment. I was her God all right, but the God one can see can be
told to take back his commandment. That was why I got her to hear my
commandment through the God one cannot see. I told her about God having
appeared to me in my dreams and that He had commanded her to …”
It seemed to me that he had felt a spasm of some centuries’ old suffering in
his chest. He pinned his back to the trunk of a tree and shut his eyes for a
while.
Then his eyelids started trembling gradually – like his lips, and he said,
“When Mahant Kirpa Sagar had presented you as his offering at the feet of
Shiva’s statue in the temple and had said that from that day forth the boy was
to be considered Shiva’s he had spoken the truth. What difference did it make
if the body was his? When your Mother had asked him for a son, he had his
mind on Shiva when he gave his body to her.”
On saying this to me, it seemed that the age-long suffering he had been going
through had now become the source of his strength. He withdrew his body
from the trunk and stood away from it as firmly as the three itself. And then
he broke into smiles like a tree newly sprouting tender, green leaves. “That
will was mine. I am Shiva himself. Like Shiva, I have drunk my cup of poison
…”
He had really drunk his cup of poison, I could see that. I lowered my eyes.
“You must be labouring under the illusion that you are not my son. But I think
otherwise. Accounts are settled not in this world, but in the world beyond. A
genuine union is of minds, not bodies. The body would not go all the way
with me, that is why I had recourse to my will. His body, my will. So, you are
the produce of that unique union. How can I say you are not my son? …” my
head had lowered itself by now.
He had gone on – “I conferred no favour on your Mother. She, poor soul, still
believes I appeared as God to her. This too is a sin I confess to – that I
revealed nothing more to her. Perhaps the temptation of being her God still
weighs more with me …” He broke into laughter and continued, “You are her
son. Considering you as my son too, I further confess to you that I wronged
her in my youth. She had hardly descended from her palanquin as a bride
when I left her and went to foreign lands. I earned enough for my revels, but
more than the money lost, I lost my own soul. I contracted a disease that
specialists told me had rendered me impotent. My name would not have lived
on. All eaten up by that disease when I returned home, I did not deserve to see
her face. I cursed myself for not being able to see her face to face. Years
passed I observed how much she yearned for a son. How much longer could I
have gone on like that? After all, I owed her a debt … somehow or other, I
had to show your face to her …”
It seemed his feet were lifted from the earth on which he stood. So high that
indeed they were level with my brow …
Perhaps he had started walking, for it seemed to me that the eyes in my head
followed the direction his feet took …
It was a long, long way. Not a thing could be seen. Perhaps the evening
twilight had thickened; or else perhaps, I was walking along the tortuous
passages of the caves…
Then there was light. I saw he held a lantern in his hand. Perhaps he had just
lit it …
Then I saw the lantern-glass was shining clear and bright. He had finally
succeeded in rubbing and wiping the stains off clean.
And in the lantern light, lo and behold! Feasting her eyes on my face, I saw
my Mother …
Walking through the forest to the rear of the temple. I do not know how or
when I reached here, her house …
Spontaneously my arms reached out for her … as groping in the deep dark
passages of cave, one searches for the way out …
I feel her breath on my brow. A cool, fresh breeze blows in from somewhere
and mingles with my breath …
One step more perhaps for me to reach my summit – Mount Kailash…
The entire earth seems to be washed clean by the Holy High Heavens above.
The clouds spread something soft and silken under my feet … Slowly and
softly, the branches of trees enfold and embrace me …
A cool fine spray falls on my brow; some birds have flown overhead, perhaps
they have flapped the frost off their wings …
They have, perhaps shaken off their wings their shivering fears onto my
breast …
Some rays of the sun now come to awaken the sleeping snows …
The waters of the streams tinkle so – as if borne on by silver-belled slippers
…
All the splendours, the heights and the solitudes of Mount Kailash, seem to be
mine, all mine …
In a pool of pure water, like unto my Mother’s face, my shadow slumbers on
…
Looking at a lake of lotus-flowers, Mahant Kirpa Sagar’s face rises out of my
mind…
A flower, just fallen from the branch of some tree, scarcely touches my feet
… when for a moment it seems; they lose the power to move …
Far, far away, way down below, the Cave of Darkness in which I groped for
years – comes to view. Someone, I see, still stands holding a lantern up in his
hand …
To me now, Shiva and Parvati, do not appear even to have been of stone.
Standing together under the roof of the temple, they make a sign that Cave
has alighted on Mount Kailash …
The splendours, the heights and the solitudes of Mount Kailash seem to be
mine, all mine.

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 Amrita Pritam’s other writings‥

Novels
Pinjar (The Skeleton)
Doctor Dev
Kore Kagaz, Unchas Din
Sagar aur Seepian
Rang ka Patta
Dilli ki Galiyan
Terahwan Suraj
Yaatri (That Man)
Jilavatan (1968)

Autobiography
Rasidi Ticket (1976)
Shadows of Words (2004)

Short stories
Kahaniyan jo Kahaniyan Nahi
Kahaniyon ke Angan mein
Stench of Kerosene

Poetry anthologies
Amrit Lehran (Immortal Waves)(1936)
Jiunda Jiwan (The Exuberant Life) (1939)
Trel Dhote Phul (1942)
O Gitan Valia (1942)
Badlam De Laali (1943)
Lok Peera (The People’s Anguish) (1944)
Pathar Geetey (The Pebbles) (1946)
Punjabi Di Aawaaz (1952)
Sunehray (Messages) (1955)
  - Sahitya Akademi Award
Ashoka Cheti (1957)
Kasturi (1957)
Nagmani (1964)
Ik Si Anita (1964)
Chak Nambar Chatti (1964)
Uninja Din (1979)
Kagaz Te Kanvas (1981)- Bhartiya Jnanpith
Chuni Huyee Kavitayen

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